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THE PEOPLE'S 


CONDENSED 

LIBRARY. 

» 

A COMPENDIUM OF 

UNIVERSAL KNOWLEDGE, 

HISTORICAL, SCIENTIFIC, MECHANICAL AND STATISTICAL 

COMPRISING THE 


Origin of Many Things Not Generally Known 



COMPILED AND ARRANGED BY R. M. WASHBURN. 

'> - - 



BURLINGTON, IOWA. 

I. F. SEGNER & CO., Publishers. 


























PREFACE. 


The verdict of the reading public (whose judgment is best and final) on 
the value of former editions of this work has convinced the collater that he 
has struck the key-note to the popular mind. Brevity and conciseness are 
the distinctive features without detraction from the importance or the reli¬ 
ability of the subjects treated. There is no end to the making of books, 
but that the compiler of this has supplied a want long felt is attested by 
numerous and unsolicited testimonials; and, stimulated by a desire to make 
the new edition more complete than its predecessors, I have given not only 
the origin and history of the earlier important discoveries and inventions, 
but those of more recent date, including some of the most startling in the 
annals of the nineteenth century. The work is not designed nor intended 
to occupy the entire province of an encyclopedia; its aim is to be well com¬ 
pacted rather than exhaustive. With due regard to the value of the standard 
encyclopedias, their cost places them above the reach of many, while the 
expansive treatment of the different subjects is not the desideratum of that 
class of readers who prefer “ a running banquet that hath much variety 
but little of a sort.” This is a rapid age and people desire concentrated 
knowledge, the cream and siftings of selection. The busy cares of life and 
other causes have hindered many from gaining information on subjects 
of interest to them; and it has been my object to winnow the wheat from 
the chaff, in the great mass of statistical, historical, and descriptive informa¬ 
tion contained in standard works, and compress such instruction as is of use 
and interest into form the most convenient for speedy reference, but yet 
containing a sufficiency of detail to reward the studious reader. Whether 
consulted by the man of business, the student, mechanic, housewife or child, 
the book will prove a source of infinite pleasure and profit. To those seek¬ 
ing information of a practical nature the selection, variety and arrangement 
of subjects can not fail to provide a fund of knowledge not easily obtained in 
similar form. As indicated by the title the book is a library in itself, and 
as such may confidently be commended to the acceptance of the thinking 
public. R. M. W. 

April 1 , 1889 . 





t 






INDEX. 


PAGE. , 

A hundred years ago.377 

Accidents, Simple remedies for.215 

Acknowledge the Corn.627 

^Eolian harp, How to construct an.333 

Advertisements, History of . 97 

Accidental Discoveries.629 

Alabaster and Plaster Paris.344 

Alcohol, New use for.110 

Alcohol, History and nature of.223 

Alligator leather.466 

Almanacs.202 

Apostles, Where they rest.155 

Alum, How obtained.247 

Aluminum.—Its properties and uses.269 

Amber.146 

Ambergris.475 

American wonders.380 

Ancient vessels.378 

Ancient bills of lading.216 

Ancient tables of wood ..303 

Apples, The first in this country.391 

Aqueducts. 276 

Arts ol a hundred years ago. 47 

Arts, Economy of the. 51 

Arts, The lost.248 

Arabian mode of perfuming.508 

Architecture, The origin of Roman.595 

Arkwright.489 

Artillery, Ancient.291 

Asafcetida.343 

Asbestos.532 

Assaying.464 

Attar of rose.273 

Augur.289 

Autographs, Sale of..341 

Automation—Mechanical wonders.320 

Awnings..357 

.Babbitt metal. 22 

Balloon, The history of the.394 

Bananas and Plantains of the tropics .... 140 

Bank, The first.366 

Bank-notes, How engraved. 38 

Banyan tree, The.298 

Barbers.428 

Bayonet, Origin of the.432 

Baskets.. 

Baths, Sand and mud.517 


PAGE. 

Beards, History of.181 

Beauty in age.282 

Beautiful experiment.235 

Beads.,.. .271 

Beds, Sleeping.„.102 

Beer.435 

Bells, Large. 39 

Bellows.271 

Bible, Curiosities of the.342 

Billiards, History of. 42 

Birds, Skinning and stuffing.513 

Birds, How they learn to sing and build., 36 

Black, Ebonized..145 

Blanchard, Thomas.492 

Blindness, Color.122 

Blind, The, What they have done.270 

Blue laws, The.526 

Bogardus, James.496 

Books, Wood. 37 

Book-binding, Ancient. 70 

Boots, History of.126 

Boxes, Sizes of.633 

Boomerang, The.233 

Borax. 50 

Box-wood. 52 

Boy astronomer, The.. 212 

Brass, the origin and uses of.587 

Brandy, Origin of.535 

Bread, History of..592 

Breakers, Power of sea. 46 

Barrel of Elour.505 

Bridges, Iron, Origin of.179 

Brick.425 

Broadcloth, How made.602 

Bromine and Iodine.594 

Bronze for priming in gold.193 

Bronze statues, How cast. 70 

“Brother Jonathan,” Origin of the term.. 456 

Brotherhoods, The.497 

Broom-corn—Where grown and manufac¬ 
tured . 332 

Bubbles.189 

“Bulls” and “Bears”.125 

Buyoing vessels, Abraham Lincoln’s 

mode of. 58 

Burden, Henry.495 


Bushel, Weights of in different States.... 577 


Y 






























































































vi 


INDEX. 


Business Law.639 

Butter,. 362 

Butter cooler.287 

Buttons, Manufacturer of. 19 

Calico printing.597 

Camel’s hair.522 

Cameos.164 

Camp-meetings, Origin of.386 

Camphor, Refined.105 

Camphor-water as a germinator.104 

Camphor Storm.glass.436 

Camphor tree. 43 

Canary, A history of the.327 

Canes. 152 

Cannon.375 

Capitol, The dome of the. 107 

Carat, Explanation of the term. 52 

Card, The Postal. 45 

Card-making machine, The invention of. .431 

Card playing.439 

Carpets, Introduction of. 79 

Carpets, A history of in America. 79 

Capacity of Cisterns.633 

Carriages, History of.424 

Cattle American.392 

Cedar.304 

Celery as a nervine.612 

Celluloid—A substitute for ivory. 121 

Cement for metal and glass.198 

“Cent, The old red”. 314 

Chalk.589 

Chamois. ,313 

Champagne. 544 

Charcoal. 75 

Charcoal on flowers, Effects of. 535 

Chemistry.278 

Cheese.362 

Chess-board, the. 99 

Chimneys. 599 

China, The great wall of. 72 

China and Glassware, How to take care 108 

Chloroform, History of.. 49 

Christmas, The history of. 734 

Christmas tree. 735 

Church pews, The history of. 534 

Cigars, Havana. 999 

Cigarettes, How they are manufactured. 999 

Circular saw, The inventor of the. 322 

Clocks. 157 

Clocks, Water. 15 g 

Clock, Origin of the business in Connect¬ 


icut . 

Climates of The United States 
Clothing, curious fact about.... 
Coal, Anthracite. 


159 

•633 

335 

189 


Coal, How to burn. 

Coal, The days before. 

Cobalt.—Its properties and use—. 

Coffee, History of. 

Coffee, French. 

Cog, Wheel. 

Coin, Gold, How made. 

Coin, The wasting of. 

Coins, our Goverment. 

Coinage, ancient and modern. 

Coins, Comparative Value of. 

College, Harvard. 

Coloring Grasses. 

Colt, Samuel. 

Combs. 

Combs, piano keys, etc., Manufacture of 

ivory. 

Commerce of the world. 

Compass, Mariners. 

Compound, Useful. 

Comedy and tragedy. 

Concert, Pitch. 

Conserve of rose leaves. 

Cooper, Peter. 

Copper. 

Coral. 

Cork, The trade in . 

Cork, Ancient uses of. 

Cork-cutting in Spain. 

Costumes in ancient times. 

Cotton culture. 

Cough, How to check a. 

Counterfeit notes, how made. 

Court-plaster, To make. 

Cow pox.—how the matter is obtained.., 
Crape. 

Curious ways of plants.* 

Curiosities of the Bible. 

Curious calculation. 

Cutting precious stones. 

Cuttle-Fish, The. 

Currency, How notes and fractional cur¬ 
rency are made. 

Crucible. . 

Davy, Sir Humphrey. 

Dates. 

Days, Long and short. 

Daguerreotypes. 

Deaths by war. 

Death of English Kings. 

Death of four great men. 

Declaration of Independence, Signers of 

the. 

Declaration, Signing the. 

Deed of Farm. 


.. 214 
265 
’ * 565 
’ ’ 227 

* 229 
.* 275 

. 59 
*350 

* 622 
*283 
*636 
*635 
*585 
.492 
,.427 

.134 
. 358 
.468 
.202 
.226 
. 263 
.486 
.490 
.434 
.162 
. 144 
148 
579 
410 

405 
225 
117 
297 

53 

634 

124 

342 

132 

285 

556 

501 

364 

490 

370 

201 

406 
353 

49 

260 

527 

293 

194 














































































































Diphtheria, Antiquity of.440 

Delicate textile fabrics.266 

Dental surgery.281 

Diamonds. 138 

Diamonds, Famous.139 

Dido.612 

Die-sinkers of Birmingham.560 

Dipping the hand into molton iron.188 

Discoveries, Important.115 

Distance of a star from the earth.232 

Distances around the World.632 

Dollar mark ($), Origin of the.374 

Dolls, The home of the.207 

Dolls’ shoes, Manufacture of.100 

Drills, How to harden.127 

Drinking W ater.299 

Drowned men, How the French bring 

back to life.409 

Dun, Origin of the word. 20 

Ear, some facts about the.137 

Ebonized, Black.145 

Eating regular.249 

Ebony. 300 

Economy of the arts. 51 

Edison, Thomas A. 13 

Eggs Easter.418 

Eggs, To preserve.304 

Eggs, The number of, from a hen.199 

Eggs, Medical properties of.107 

Eggs, Prize method of keeping.339 

Egyptians, The wisdom of the.376 

Electricity, History of. 61 

Electric Telegraph, Origin and history of 

the. 51 

Electric battery, A cheap.115 

Electrotypes, How made.295 

Embroidering by machinery.Ill 

Eminent men, Ages of.355 

Enamel and Mosaic.294 

Engraver, The first American.349 

Engraving. 348 

Ericson, John.487 

Esquimaux marriage ceremony. 96 

Ether.625 

Extinct families. 54 

Exercises in pronunciation.113 

Eyes, Different kinds of.219 

Facts from the census.226 

Fact, Remarkable.211 

Farm the largest, Wheat.623 

Fans.367 

Feathers, The manufacture of ornamental 359 

Female sailors. 75 

Files, How steel files are made.511 

Finger-ring, Removing a tight.178 


Fire.•.105 

Fire-places. 608 

Fire alarm bells.297 

Food, proportionate properties of.485 

Fires, Great. ..415 

Fires, Ancient modes of extinguishing.... 581 

Fishes, Fecundity of.340 

Fish-hooks, How made.575 

Flag, The first United States. 39 

Flax Plant, History of the.256 

Flowers, The cultivation of. 76 

Flowers, the effects of charcoal on.536 

Flute, History of the.522 

Food, The influence of. 20 

Foolscap paper. 52 

Forks, History of..577 

Fortunes of our Presidents. 48 

Fourth of March, Why the Presidential 

term begins the. 44 

Franklin, Benjamin.487 

Free Masonry.497 

Friday, What happened on. 40 

Frost, What is.231 

Frost bite.399 

Fruits, Tropical. 596 

Fruits, Nativity of.615 

Fruits, Grape and small.616 

Fulton, Robert. 385 

Furniture stuffs. 480 

Furniture and ornaments of the Ancients 252 

Furs.421 

Furs, Renovating.210 

Gas-lighting, Chronology of.340 

Gas, First use of illuminating in America 317 

Gas-taps, Leakage of.145 

Gelatine.621 

Gems, Ancient.354 

Glass.325 

Glass, A history of.323 

Glass of Venice, The.324 

Glass, Spinning.451 

Glass, Annealing in oil. 453 

Glass bottles, etc., How to cut.248 

Glass, Imitation of ground. 451 

Glass-stopper, To remove a. 81 

Glass chimneys, How, were invented.441 

Glasses, Looking.326 

Glasses, Looking, spoiled by sunshine ... 350 

Gloves, History of. 280 

Gloves, Dyeing of kid.520 

Gloves, Kid. 109 

Glue, Liquid. 225 

Glucose and Grape Sugar.630 

Glue, How made.506 

Glycerine.195 














































































































Vlll 


INDEX. 


Gold, Discoveries in America.548 

Gold-fish, Management of.150 

Gold and Silver, Value of..456 

Gold Coin, How it is made. 59 

Gold-beating. 17 

Gold lace, How made.. 42 

Gold Premium.441 

Goodyear, Charles.347 

Great Eastern, The. 98 

Great Stones.201 

Great men, The tools of.345 

“ “ .260 

Greenback paper, how made. 60 

Grindstone—Wherefrom and how made. 346 

“Grog,” Origin of the name. 54 

Guava, The.580 

Gum Arabic.461 

Guns.442 

Gunpowder—How made.175 

Hail.342 

Hair-cloth, Manufacture of.255 

Hand Shaking.236 

Hardening saws and springs.570 

Handkerchief, First use of.215 

Hasheesh—Its smokers and eaters.382 

Hats and hatting, History of. 82 

“ Panama. 18 

“ The silk. 564 

“ The manufacture of fine felt. 83 

“ Leghorn straw. 85 

“ How palm leaf are made. 88 

Hay Steel,. 505 

Heat of different woods. 437 

Hen’s egg, Wonders of a. 41 

Herschel, Sir John. 559 

Herring, Preserving. 555 

Hinges.433 

Hook and by Crook.272 

Horse, The Morgan. 93 

Horseshoes. 594 

Horse-power, What is meant by a. 55 

Horseshoes, Something about. 153 

House, How to furnish a.206 

House, A very large. 137 


“Household words,” Origin of familiar 


sayings.169 

How to spell.214 

How to cut glass bottles, etc.248 

Howe, Elias.489 

Human body, The. 337 

Human hair, The trade in. 68 

Human endurance. 144 

Hundred years ago, Arts of a. 47 

Hungary water.234 

Ice pitcher, A cheap. 51 


Ice-making, Artificial.589 

Icebergs.370 

Imitation ground glass.451 

Independence,Signers of the declaration of 527 
Independence, Signing the declaration of 293 

India rubber.204 

Indigo.636 

Inks, Ancient.584 

Inks, Manufacture of Indian.558 

Inlaid Pearl..174 

Insurance.C08 

Interesting facts.450 

Interest.581 

Invention, Antiquity of.163 

Invention honors, The uncertainty of.... 198 

Inventions, American. 335 

Inventions, Originators of.254 

Invention of punctuation.116 

Instruments, Strain of stringed.516 

Iron paper. 95 

Iron bridges, Origin of. 179 

Ivory, Artificial.384 

Japenese mechanics—How they work.... 132 

Jewels, The language of.166 

Journalism two thousand years ago.264 

Jute,What is.259 

Kid skins. 109 

Kid gloves. 109 

King of Jersey. 147 

Kings, Death of English. 49 

Kitchen, The German. 213 

Knights of Pythias. 500 

Knitted wear. 599 

Knives, History of. 573 

Lace, Something about.237 

Lace, Value of. 159 

Lace, Gold, How made. 42 

Lafayette’s watch.J60 

Lakes, Depth of American.462 

Lamps, Street. 3^9 

Lamps, History of. 21 

Lamps, Constant electric. 591 

Lampblack.. 

Lead, White.^ 

Languages, Changes in. 459 

Lead. ^49 

Lead pencils—Plumbago miues.288 

Leap year. 2 50 

Leather, History of.jg g 

Kussia, How made. ^86 

Patent. ^37 

Leaves, Pressing. 233 

Lemons, The healthfulness of. 69 

Letters, Number of in different languages. 67 
Lisle thread. 153 


u 


u 














































































































INDEX. ix 


Leyden Jar, Invention of the.502 

Light, A safety. 73 

Light, beautiful experiment with.389 

Lincoln’s, Abraham, mode of buoying 

vessels. 58 

Linen manufacture.201 

Liquid glue.225 

Locks, Manufacture of.314 

Locomotive, Yankee, in Egypt.307 

Locomotives, Caprices of.336 

Looking glasses, About.326 

Looking-glasses, spoiled by sunshine .... 350 

Luxury in ancient Rome.360 

Lyon’s silk, Manufacture of.172 

Macadam, John L., Life of.190 

Macadamized roads. 190 

Madder.477 

Mahogany, Cutting in Honduras.284 

Malachite.251 

Man and wife.231 

Manufacture of clay tobacco pipes.116 

Manufacture of ivory combs, piano keys 

etc.134 

Mantelpiece ornament.217 

Maple sugar, The first.479 

Maps.191 

Maps and Charts ...517 

Marble, Imitation of.r. 382 

Months, Origin of names.628 

Matches, in early times.419 

Matches, History of. 60 

Meals, Time devoted to.354 

Medals or coins, Method of taking im¬ 
pressions of.118 

Memory Feats of.300 

Men of literary genius.483 

Messages, How sent by the ocean telegraph 455 

Metal Babbitt. 22 

Metalurgy, Early.485 

Microscope, A simple.344 

Microscope, Wonders of a.215 

Milling.536 

Modes of salutation.178 

Money.. ..543 

Money.526 

Moon’s influence on man and plants, The 352 

Morse, Samuel F. B.408 

Mosaic and enamel.294 

Moths, A good way to destroy.296 

Mountains of Scripture, The.216 

Mucilage, Improved.. .192 

Music, The origin of..'.364 

Music hereditary. 22 

Musk.217 

Mustard.180 


Myrrh. ,475 

Nails, The first cut . 433 

Needles.154 

Neuralgia, Cure for.297 

New York fifty years ago.461 

News, Obtaining in the olden time.338 

Newspapers, Old.259 

Newspaper, The earliest modern.402 

Newspapers, Influence of.506 

Newspaper printing, Wonders of.331 

Nickel, its use in coinage.170 

Noise in shells.203 

Noon-mark, How to make. 197 

Notation.275 

Notes, Bank, Ilow engraved. 38 

Notes, How counterfeit are made.117 

Odd-Fellowship.498 

Odd minutes of waiting.380 

Odors, The prism of.249 

Oil springs—When they were first dis¬ 
covered .193 

Oil-cloth carpets. 80 

Old World, The.507 

“Old Ironsides”.427 

“Old Elm” on Boston common, The.414 

Olives.*.426 

Olive trees.309 

Opium manufacture.304 

Opium eating.305 

Oranges. 368 

Orchards, The largest.624 

Orchards.554 

Orders, Powerful.550 

Organs, History of.418 

Ornament, A beautiful.597 

Ornaments, Parian.258 

Ostriches, Raising.417 

Oysters.544 

Paine, Thos.495 

Palm leaf.519 

Papier Mache.532 

Paper—its material and uses.223 

Paper, Early manufacture of in America. 165 

Paper of cotton rags.315 

Paper collars, How made.515 

Paper hangings, Manufacture of wall and 

decoration.403 

Paper weights, glass, How are made. 54 

Parian ornaments.258 

Paris white and whiting.518 

Paste that will keep a year.343 

Patent office, History of the American ... 445 

Patents, Cost and how to obtain.523 

Patents, First United States.171 

Patent, An old English.178 













































































































X 


INDEX. 


Pawn broker—Origin of the three balls.. 437 


Pearl, Inlaid...174 

Pens.465 

People of the world in small space.199 

Pepper.136 

Percentage of profit.602 

Percussion caps. 443 

Perfumes, The home of the.130 

Perfumes, Distillation of.199 

Perspiration, Checked.123 

Petroleum, The origin of..505 

Photography in America.407 

Pelisse.188 

Physiognomy.244 

Piano Forte, History of the. 45 

Piano woods...115 

Piano, The oldest in America.364 

Pilgrims’ Progress, The new.541 

Pins, History of.155 

Pin money. 44 

Pipes, Meerschaum.229 

Pipes, Manufacture of clay.116 

Pistols.443 

Planing machine, The first.104 

Plants, Migration of.333 

Plants, Curious ways of.124 

Plants, Potting. 484 

Plants, Wild, domesticated. 383 

Plants, Frozen, How to treat.607 

Plantains and Bananas of the tropics .... 140 

Plaster Paris and alabaster.344 

Platinum. 150 

Plows, Cast iron.401 

Plows, Old.235 

Plumbago mines—Lead pencils.288 

Political History, Curiosities of American 272 

Porcelain, Dresden.371 

Postage stamps, How made.230 

Postage stamps, Collecting.585 

Postal card, The. 45 

Posts and mails.365 

Post offices.217 

Potash, Carbonate of.519 

Pot-hooks. 434 

Pottery, History of.301 

Poultry—How the French fatten their ... 467 

Poverty of great men.211 

Prayer, The first in Congress.438 

Precautionary. 74 

Presidents, where and when born, edu¬ 
cated and died.460 

Presidential term begins March 4th, Why 44 

Pronunciation, Exercise in.113 

Presidents, Fortunes of the. 48 

Presidents, Religion of the.340 


Presidents, Graves of.617 

Printing, Origin of.328 

Printing, Introduction of into America... 329 

Printing, Wonders of Newspaper.331 

Printing in China.339 

Pumps, History of. 74 

Punctuation, Invention of.115 

Putty, Removal of dry.293 

Putty, Manufacture of. ..520 

Quicksilver. 589 

Rags, The uses of old.508 

Railroads. 32 

Railroading in early days.334 

Rain, How is formed. 98 

Rain, One inch of.116 

Rain, Black.107 

Raisins.363 

Rats, To drive away without poison.482 

Reapers.220 

Recipe, A domestic. 50 

Religion of our Presidents.840 

Remarkable fact. ...211 

Resins ....263 


Revolution, First blood of the. 58 

Ribbon and silk weaving.171 

Rich men of old.352 

Rich men, how they begun life. 96 

Riches from daily savings.858 

Richest men in America. 19 

Ring? Who wore the first.173 

Rivers, Western.177 

Roads, Macadamized.190 

Rope . • .466 

Rose, Attar of. 273 

Roses.389 

Rosewood.311 

“Rosin the bow”. 55 

Rules for showing a garden.226 

Saddles.561 

Saffron.290 

Safes.378 

Sago. 331 


Sailors, Female. 75 

Saltpetre and its uses. 73 

“Salute, The old shoe”. 440 

Salutation, Modes of.178 

Sand Blast.624 

Salt.628 


Saws, History and manufacture of.568 


Saw mills. 97 

Scales.509 

Scent-bags, How to make sachets or.216 

Schools, History of.605 

Science and Church...637 

Scissors. 113 











































































































INDEX. 


xi 


Screws, to make them hold. 

Sealskins, Dyeing. 

Servants, three hundred years ago. 

Sewing machine, its origin. 

Shawls, Camels’ hair. 

Shawls, Cashmere. 

Sheep, The introduction into America.. 
Sheet iron, Manufacture of Russian.... 

Shirts. 

Shoes, History of. 

Shoe pegs, How made. 

Short-hand. 

Shot. 

Shrinking of seasoned timber... 

Silk.. 

Silk, Manufacture of Lyons. 

Silk and ribbon weaving. 

Silk, in England. 

Silk, The process of gilding. 

Silk, The gloss on. 

Silk, The first piece of American.. 

Silverware, Modem. 

Silver plating. 

Singer, Isaac M. 

Sirloin.. 

Slate pencils, History of. 

Sleep, The mystery of. 

Sleep, The amount of necessary. 

Smelling faculty, Value of the. 

Soap, History of. 

Soda lakes of Mexico. 

Sound, Beautiful experiments on. 

Sound. 

Speaking tubes. 

Spectacles. 

Specific gravity. 

Speed of light and railways. 

Spelling, Rules for. 

Spices... 

Spirit level, Invention of the. 

Sponges. 

Spoons... 

Spots and stains, How to remove. 

Springs, Hair. 

Spruce, Fir. 

Stages. 

Starch. 

Stars and stripes, When and where first 

displayed abroad. 

Starving, Sensation of. 

Statues of bronze, How made. 

Steam, A condensed history of. 

Steam, Application of to navigation... 
Steam navigation, History of Atlantic. 
Steam fire engine, The.. 


Steamer, The first screw.148 

Steamer, Loss of the first on the Atlantic 148 

Steamer, History of the first ocean. 28 

Steel ? What is.102 

Steel, Hay.525 

Steel, Laminated.444 

Stephenson, George.388 

Stereotyping. 89 

Stockings, History of. 36 

Stones, Cutting precious.285 

Stones, Great.201 

Storm-glass, The Camphor.436 

Stove, The history of the. 56 

Stove, The oldest.142 

Strain of stringed instruments.516 

Straw goods, History of in the United 

States. 86 

Straw goods split. The invention of a 

Yankee girl. 87 

Strength of metals, wood, etc.108 

Strings, Violin. . 48 

Stucco work.452 

Style in the olden times.334 

Suction.192 

Sugar. 610 

Sugar, The first maple.479 

Sulphur.310 

Sulphuric acid.113 

Swine, American.393 

Table sets, Extraordinary.262 

Tallow, To purify.518 

Tally.270 

Tapioca.221 

Tariff, Origin of the word. 57 

Taste and smell utilized.224 

Taxidermy—Skinning and stuffing birds 513 

Tea, The history of.367 

Teeth, Composition and manufacture ot 

Porcelain.429 

Telegraph, Electric, Origin and 

history of. 61 

Telegraph, First week of the. 64 

Telegraph, Origin of Atlantic. 66 

Telegraph cables, Ocean.*454 

Telescope, Invention of the.384 

Telescopes—How they are made.127 

Telephone. 552 

Thanksgiving, National.611 

“ The Old Oaken Bucket”.507 

The divining rod. 663 

The Lion’s fear of man.380 

The Great Eastern. 08 

Theaters, Ancient and modern. 469 

Thermometers, Invention of the. 277 

Thermometers, How made. 533 


379 

420 

463 

196 

76 

77 

393 

574 

105 

367 

457 

447 

420 

484 

112 

172 

171 

381 

336 

268 

197 

218 

509 

493 

114 

221 

92 

361 

145 

546 

298 

584 

337 

592 

297 

221 

212 

604 

257 

51 

175 

175 

572 

339 

310 

217 

627 

94 

375 

70 

23 

26 

29 

398 











































































































INDEX, 


• • 
Xll 


Thread-making. 211 

Thrilling incidents in the life of an inven¬ 
tor. 149 

Thimble making. 95 

Timber, Simple preventative for 

decaying. 357 

Timber, The oldest. 177 

Time, space, and power. 194 

Tin, Where and how obtained.142 

To prevent polished materials from 

tarnishing.174 

Tobacco.365 

Tools, Curious facts about. 479 

Towers, etc., Height of.480 

Tracing, Paper for. 337 

Train dispatching.521 

Transfusion of blood.474 

Trees, The huge, of the world. 114 

Trees, Age and size of.539 

Tricks of the alchemist.311 

Trunks.551 

Turpentine.268 

Type, The manufacture of.200 

Typewriter. 49 

Umbrella, The first.104 

Umbrella oddities.571 

Uncle Sam. 463 

Up Salt River. 357 

Value of gold and silver.456 

Vanilla bean, The.106 

Vegetables, Nativity of.613 

Velocity of wind.256 

Vessel, First built in Massachusetts.. .400 

Violin strings. 48 

Violin and Zither makers.120 

Violins, Stradavarus and his.118 

Violins, Cremona. 121 

Wall-paper, Manufacture of.403 


Wall-paper, Choosing.287 

Washington’s ancestry.547 

Watch, The.161 

Watch ? Who made the first.162 

Watch, Lafayette’s.160 

Watch springs.236 

Watch oil.515 

Water, Drinking.299 

Waterworks, The first in the United 

States.459 

Water cure. Origin of the.531 

Watt, James.,.316 

War, Death by.353 

Wax fruit making.476 

W eather table, Perpetual.307 

Webster’s last speech.548 

Wedding ring, The finger.281 

Weights of the sexes.Ill 

Wells, Capacity of.633 

Whales, Length of. 95 

Wheat, Unbolted. 593 

Wheelbarrow.516 

Whiting and Paris white. 518 

Whitney, Eli.487 

Windows.262 

Wire making. 532 

Wills and Executors.638 

Wonders, The seven ancient.108 

Wonders, American.1580 

Wood bending.477 

Woodpecker’s foresight. The.193 

Wood workers, a hint for.225 

Woods, East India.309 

Woods, Tropical..C08 

Yankee.135 

Year, Leap.250 

Zero, The history of.101 

Zither and Violin makers.120 
















































































food 


. C/. (Sd/a 



















THE PEOPLES’ 


CONDENSED 

LIBRARY. 


EDISON AND HIS INTENTIONS. 


Lindlay Murray truly said in his old 
English Grammar: “This is an age of 
progress.” The evening of the 19th 
century is crowned with more wonder¬ 
ful discoveries and inventions than ever 
before marked any period of like dura¬ 
tion in the history of the world’s pro¬ 
gress. It is fitting therefore that we 
should select for the opening pages of 
this work a theme and a personage 
characteristic of the age. One of the 
most remarkable inventors and dis¬ 
coverers of the present day is Thomas 
Alva Edison. He was born in Milan, 
Ohio, February 11, 1847. At that time 
Milan was a place of considerable com¬ 
mercial importance, but the construc¬ 
tion of the Lake Shore Railway a few 
miles south of the town ended its pros¬ 
perity. He played upon the banks of 
the Huron and rambled about the 
country like any other country boy 
and perhaps exhibited but few of the 
traits that marked his maturer years 
except a preference for the construction 
of miniature plank roads, villages and 
play things of his own designing. 


When young Edison was seven years 
old the family removed to Port Huron, 
Michigan. Thomas was a good student 
and his mother, who had been a success¬ 
ful teacher, in her younger days faith¬ 
fully guided his studies. When only 
ten years of age he read with avidity 
some of the best historical works. 

When 12 years old he secured a po¬ 
sition as train boy on the Grand Trunk 
Railway and began to earn his own 
living. He was quite successful and 
among other exploits combining profit 
and amusement, he printed a small 
paper of his own on the train which, 
commanded ready sale. He also fitted 
up a laboratory with chemicals of varh 
ous kinds where he pursued his investi¬ 
gations in a crude way until one day 
the car was ignited from a bottle of 
phosphorus accidentally overturned and 
the irate conductor pitched Edison and 
all his traps off the train. He gather¬ 
ed up the wreck, renewed his stock 
and pursued his investigations at home. 
His genius was inventions even in boy¬ 
hood days. He made a small steam 




14 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


engine and other pieces of mechanism. 
But his mind soon began to interest 
itself in electrical and chemical re¬ 
searches. He rigged up a short tele¬ 
graph line to a neighbor’s house, which 
worked successfully. He soon after¬ 
wards rescued the little child of the 
station master at Mount Clemens, 
Michigan, from the peril of an ap¬ 
proaching train. The grateful father 
taught young Edison the mysteries of 
telegraphing and at sixteen he was in 
charge of his first office at $25.00 a 
month. 

His subsequent career as an operator 
we need not follow in detail. He was 
at once a good and a poor operator. 
He rapidly became skillful as an oper¬ 
ator but his thirst for knowledge and 
fondness of experiment often tempted 
him to neglect his routine work. In 
telegraphing, as in every other avoca¬ 
tion “business is business” and the oper¬ 
ator cannot well excel in the perform¬ 
ance of his clerical duties and at the 
same time push his studies and experi¬ 
ments as Edison did. His first office 
was Port Huron, Michigan. He filled 
positions at Indianapolis, Cincinnati, 
Louisville and Memphis. He finally 
turned up in Boston, where a pleasant 
anecdote is located concerning his first 
appearance as a “gawky” stranger of 
whom the operators were disposed to 
make not a little fun. But he quietly 
sat down to his task to work the most 
difficult wire, where many of his prede¬ 
cessors had found it exceedingly diffi¬ 
cult to keep up with the fast sending 
indulged by the New York operator at 
the other end of the circuit. But 
Edison was equal to the emergency and 
rapidly rose to prominence. Here, he 
began to give his inventive powers 
some scope. He opened a shop for re¬ 
pairs, and improvement of electrical 
apparatus. He invented a dial tele¬ 


graph instrument and put several into 
use. He also made a chemical vote re¬ 
cording apparatus, a private line tele¬ 
graph printer, and partially completed 
his duplex instrument which had long 
been a favorite study with him. In 
1870 he removed to New York and 
there began the career as an inventor 
which has since made him so famous. 
Since that date and up to the present 
writing Mr. Edison has made out of 
his inventions half a million of dollars, 
and, it should be added, has spent that 
amount pushing his investigations in 
a thousand different directions. He re¬ 
moved to Newark, N. J., and estab¬ 
lished a large manufactory and labora¬ 
tory where he brought out many of 
his most profitable inventions. In 
1876, to escape the intrusion upon his 
time of the many visitors who called 
from curiosity and other motives to see 
him and his wonderful inventions, he 
removed to Menlo Park, N. J., a retired 
place on the line of the New York and 
Philadelphia railroad 24 miles from 
New York City. There he built what 
is probably the most extensive labora¬ 
tory in the world. It is undoubtedly 
equipped with the most complete as¬ 
sisting machinery, tools and appliances 
of any experimental shop to be found 
in either the old or the new world and 
from its magic recesses there comes 
forth nearly every day some new dis¬ 
covery or invention to interest the 
world and help on the great struggle 
of humanity to lift itself to a higher 
plane of intellectual activity and to 
probe the mysteries of the physical 
world. There he has his corps of train¬ 
ed assistants, men who are skilled iu 
their specialties as electricians, chem¬ 
ists, mechanics and in every department 
of the arts and sciences. Under such a 
leader and with such appliances at his 
command and with all the capital that 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


bis business requires it is not surpris¬ 
es that Edison is able to make more 
rapid pi ogress than the poor inventor 
who struggles alone and unassisted. 
But what he has is the fruit of his own 
genius and persistence and the credit 
is all his. 

The limited space of this work will 
not permit a detailed history of his in¬ 
ventions; we can only enumerate some 
of the more prominent and important. 

The Duplex telegraph which trans¬ 
mits two messages in opposite directions 
over one wire at the same time. An 
improvement upon this is the Quadru- 
plex which increased the capacity of a 
wire four-fold. The Button repeater, 
the Gold and Stock printer, the private 
line Printer, the Automatic telegraph, 
the Electric pen and press for duplicat¬ 
ing copies of letters, circulars etc; the 
Domestic Telegraph system which was 
so popular in the leading cities before 
the advent of the telephone; the Tele¬ 
phone in a great variety of forms; the 
transmitter or Microphone for increas¬ 
ing the volume of sound in the tele¬ 
phone; the Megaphone, a peculiarly 
constructed ear-trumpet for deaf people; 
the Aerophone, to be operated by 
steam or compressed air for talking at 
long distances without the intervention 
of a wire or any other conductor of 
sound or apparatus but the instrument 
itself; the pressure relay, the Carbon 
and heostat, the Harmonic engine; 
multiplying copying ink; Yocal engine; 
the Tasimeter or minute heat measurer 
and hundreds of other minor inven¬ 
tions of more or less importance in 
themselves or as adjuncts to his other 
inventions. But two of the most not¬ 
able of his inventions are the Phono¬ 
graph and the Electric light. The 
phonograph is the most original and 
unique, perhaps, of all his inventions. 
The apparatus is very simple in con- 


15 

struction. It makes no use of electri¬ 
city. It is a revolving cylinder into 
which vocal sounds, uttered or sung, 
are so registered for reproduction and 
distribution, may be subsequently used 
to reproduce the tones in the very 
voice, tone, strength, volume, empha¬ 
sis, inflection and accent with which 
they were uttered. In describing the 
uses of this instrument, Mr. Edison 
himself is quoted as saying: “ First, 
for dictation, it will take the place 
of shorthand reporters. Instead of 
writing a man will talk them to the 
phonograph, and send the sheets 
directly to his correspondents, who 
will lay them on a phonograph and 
hear what they have to say. A first- 
class elocutionist will read one of Dick¬ 
ens’ novels into the phonograph. It 
can all be printed on a sheet ten inches 
square, and these can be multiplied by 
the within copies by a cheap process of 
electrotyping. These sheets can be 
sold for twenty-five cents each. It will 
sing in the very voice of a Patti, so 
that every family can have an opera 
any evening. It can be used to make 
toys talk. A company has already 
organized to make speaking dolls. 
They will speak or sing in a little girl’s 
voice.” 

The electric light seems associated 
with the name of Edison. When he 
went to work at the electric dynamo, 
or generator of electric force, too much 
had been done to admit of his doing 
much pioneer work. His proper mis¬ 
sion was to perfect. His labors were 
directed to removing from the dynamo 
all surplus wire not useful for purposes 
of generation, and avoid unnecessary 
internal resistance in the machine, and 
the consequent excessive accumulation 
of heat. Two methods, from the first, 
have been in use for producing electric 
light, viz: the arc and the incandes- 










16 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


cent. Edison, after experimenting 
with many substances for carbon fila¬ 
ment, finally fixed upon bamboo fibre. 
These fibres are pressed into U-shaped 
moulds where they are carbonized. 

The largest central station for elec¬ 
tric lighting is that of New York, 
managed by Edison. He has probably 
applied for and taken out more patents 
on his numerous inventions, than any 
other one person in this or any other 
country. If his life is spared the world 
may expect yet other wonders from the 
seemingly inexhaustible resources of 
his fertile inventive genius. 

IRON. 

Iron is the most useful of metals, not 
even excepting gold, and it is used in 
so many forms in medicine, in manu¬ 
factures, and in the arts that it is diffi¬ 
cult to imagine how the world could 
have ever done without it. Yet it is 
well known that many nations arrived 
at a comparatively advanced stage of 
civilization without the knowledge, at 
least without the use, of Iron. 

The useful forms of iron are cast-iron, 
steel and wrought iron. The two former 
are compounds of iron and carbon, be¬ 
ing carburets or carbides of iron. Cast 
iron has the larger proportion of carbon 
in its composition. Wrought-iron is 
nearly pure iron, but it has generally 
some trace of carbon sulphur, and 
phosphorus. The Bible speaks of Tubal 
Cain as the discoverer of Iron and the 
father of smiths, while the Egyptians 
made Hephaestus its discoverer. Pliny 
speaks of it as having been discovered 
on Mount Ida by the Dactyles, after 
the destruction of the forest by light¬ 
ning, 1432 years before Christ. He 
ascribes the discovery of the black¬ 
smith’s forge to the Cyclopes. 

Jeremiah and Ezekiel speak of iron 
and mention two qualities, one of which 


the latter calls bright iron probably 
steel. The same distinction is made by 
Hesiod (850 B. C.) 

Moses mentions an iron furnace 1490 
B. B., and Job speaks of iron as “taken 
out of the earth. The existence and 
uses of iron among the ancient Egyp¬ 
tians are pretty well proved by the 
paintings in which the iron and steel 
knives and sickles are distinguished 
from the bronze by the color; one be¬ 
ing blue and the other a reddish brown. 

Iron money was used in Sparta for 
many centuries after the time of Ly- 
curgus. Iron money was also used in 
Britain prior to the date of its conquest 
by the Romans. Steel was very an¬ 
ciently used, its invention is ascribed to 
the Chalybes, who of old lived in the 
neighborhood of what has during the 
past year or two become the celebrated 
port of Batoum. The Britains, before 
the time of Christ, used to export 
Iron to Gaul, and after the Roman 
conquest the conquerors established 
extensive smelting works, which lasted 
till the Saxon conquest and probably 
after. Iron Bars were demanded by 
William the Conqueror, as tribute from 
the city of Gloucester. In 1355, Ed¬ 
ward the III, forbade the export of 
Iron from England, and in 1483 the 
importation of articles which could be 
manufactured at home was forbidden. 
Bar Iron was made in the American 
colonies of England as early as 1622, 

The tinning of iron was introduced 
from Bohemia in 1681. The first ex¬ 
periments in smelting with anthracite 
coal were tried at Mauch Chunk, Pa., 
in 1829, in France in 1827 and in Wales 
successfully by the aid of Neilson’s 
hot-blast ovens in 1837. The experi¬ 
ment at Mauch Chunk was repeated 
with the addition of the hot-blast in 
1838, 1839 and succeeded in producing 
about two tons per day. The Pioneer 







17 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION, 


furnace at Pottsville was blown July 
1839. The first iron works in America 
were established near Jamestown, Vir¬ 
ginia in 1619. In 1622 the works were 
destroyed and the workmen with their 
families massacred by the Indians. 
The next attempt was at Lynn, Mass., 
on the banks of the Sangus in 1648. 
The ore used was the bog ore still 

o 

plentiful in that locality. At these 
works Joseph Jenks a native of Ham¬ 
mersmith, England, in 1652 by order 
of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 
coined silver shillings, sixpences and 
threepences known as the “pine-tree 
coinage,' 1 from the device of a pine- 
tree on one face. 


QUININE* 

Quinine is an alkaloid found in the 
bark of trees belonging to the Cin¬ 
chona or Peruvian bark family. It 
was first introduced into Europe about 
two hundred years ago by the Countess 
Cinch on, the wife of a Viceroy of Peru, 
and from her the bark takes its name. 
It was introduced into the United 
States about fifty years ago by Farr, 
the founder of the house of Powers & 
Wightman of the Quaker City. Before 
this the principal supply came from 
Paris. The annual consumption in 
the United States alone is from a mil¬ 
lion to a million and a quarter ounces. 


GOLD BEATING. 


The art of gold beating is a very 
ancient one. It seems highly proba¬ 
ble that, like some other arts, it 
has been known and practiced and 
forgotten. Homer refers to it; Pliny, 
more practical, states that gold can be 
beaten, one ounce making 550 leaves, 
each four fingers square — about four 
times the thickness of the gold now 


used. This is most probably such, 
gold as was used in the decoration of 
the Temple : “ It was covered with 
plates of burnished gold.” The Peru¬ 
vians had thin plates nailed together. 
It is possible that if decorations of 
this character were used in these parts, 
their insecurity would so trouble some 
folks that they would have no rest till 
they were effectually “ nailed.” The 
Thebans have in their wall histories 
some gold characters done with leaf 
said to be as thin as the gold of the 
present day. Coming down with a 
jump from the long past to the pres¬ 
ent age, we find our country cele¬ 
brated for its gold-leaf. Italy used to 
excel us, but Italy has been in a long 
sleep, and is only just awakened. It is 
one of the last things our overgrown 
offspring undertook to make for her¬ 
self. Until very recently she imported 
all the gold-leaf she required from this 
country. The gold-beater’s skin made 
here is still the admiration of the 
world (of gold beaters). This skin is 
gut skin stretched and dried on frames, 
after which each surface is very care¬ 
fully leveled, a labor intrusted to the 
delicate hands of young girls. A 
mould (as the number of square pieces 
of skin beaten at om time in the gold¬ 
beating process is called) is an expen¬ 
sive article, costing from £9 to £10, 
and when useless for gold beating, is 
still of some value. Fifty or sixty 
vears back a workman made 2,000 
leaves of gold from 18 or 19 pwts. of 
gold ; now, b} r better skin and skill, 
he is enabled to produce the same 
number from 14 or 15 pwts., showing 
a considerable reduction in the cost of 
produce, and, as may be expected, a 
deterioration in the quality of the 
article. One grain of gold beaten be¬ 
tween this skin can be extended to 
some 75 square inches of surface, the 










18 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


thickness of which will be 1.367650th 
part of an inch. The riband of gold 
is annealed or softened in the fire, and 
cut up into pieces of the size of a 
square inch, and 150 of these are placed 
by means of wooden pliers, between an 
equal number of leaves of vellum; each 
square of gold occupying the centre of 
each leaf of vellum. A parchment 
case, open at both ends, is drawn over 
this tool, or hutch , as the packet of 
vellum leaves is called, and this is en¬ 
closed in a second similar case, so as to 
cover the edges left exposed by the first 
case. This packet is then beaten with 
a sixteen pound hammer upon a smooth 
block of marble, strongly supported 
from below, and surrounded on three 
sides by a raised ledge of oak; the front 
edge is open, and has a kind of leathern 
apron attached to it for catching frag¬ 
ments of gold that may escape in the 
subsequent operations. The elasticity 
of the packet causes the hammer to 
rebound, and thus lightens the labor of 
the operator, and enables him to apply 
his blows with regular effect; every 
now and then, in the interval between 
two blows, he turns the packet over to 
distribute the force equally, and he 
occasionally bends the packet to and 
fro to overcome any slight adhesion 
between the gold and the vellum, and 
at intervals he opens the packet to see 
that the work is satisfactory, and also to 
re-arrange the relative positions of the 
squares of gold, by placing those near 
the surface in the centre, and placing 
these near the surface. The beating 
is continued until the one inch squares 
are spread out into four inch squares. 
Each piece of gold is then taken out, 
placed on a cushion, and cut into four 
pieces with a knife. These pieces are 
put between the leaves of another tool, 
called a shader , made of gold-beater’s 
skin. The packet is enclosed in parch¬ 


ment, and beaten with a twelve pound 
hammer as before. The squares of gold 
are again spread out to nearly the area 
of the gold-beater’s skin. The packet 
is again opened, the leaves of gold are 
again cut into fours, and each quarter 
is placed between two leaves of mem¬ 
brane as before. The gold in this case 
is divided by means of a strip of cane, 
since it has a tendency to adhere to a 
steel blade. The squares of gold now 
increased to 2,400 are separated into 
three parcels of 800 each; the squares 
of each parcel are again separated by 
gold-beater’s skin, confined in the parch¬ 
ment cases, and beaten as before. These 
squares of gold leaf expand for the 
third time nearly to the size of the 
leaves of membranes, and have at length 
attained the required degree of tenuity. 
The process of attenuation can be car¬ 
ried beyond this, but the gold is apt to 
tear, and the process requires great extra 
care. The three beatings and two 
quarterings expand the gold to an area 
about 190 times greater than it had in 
the riband form, and 100 square feet of 
it weighs but an ounce. 

PANAMA HATS. 

What they are Made From, and How. 

The Jipijapa is common in Panama 
and Darien, especially in lialf-shady 
places; but its geographical range is 
by no means confined to them. It is 
found all along the western shores of 
New Grenada and Ecuador; and it has 
been found even at Salango, where, 
however, it seems to reach its most 
southern limit, thus extending over 
twelve degrees of latitude from the 
tenth N. to the second S. The Jipi¬ 
japa, or Panama hats, are principally 
manufactured in Veraguas and West¬ 
ern Panama; not all, however, known 
in commerce by that name are plaited 
in the Isthmus; by far the greater 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


19 


proportion is made at Manta, Monti 
Christi, and other parts of Ecuador. 
The hats are worn almost in the whole 
American continent and the West In¬ 
dies, and would probably be equally 
used in Europe, did not their high 
price, varying from two to one hun¬ 
dred and fifty dollars prevent their 
importation. They are distinguished 
from all others by consisting only of 
a single piece, and by their lightness 
and flexibility. They may be rolled 
up and put into the pocket without 
injury. In the rainy season they are 
apt to get black, but by washing them 
with soap and water, besmearing them 
with lime juice or any other acid, and 
exposing them to the sun, their white¬ 
ness is easily restored. 

The process of making these hats is 
as follows: The “ straw,previous to 
plaiting, has to go through several 
processes. The leaves are gathered 
before they unfold, all their ribs and 
coarser veins removed, and the rest, 
without being separated from the base 
of the leaf, is reduced to shreds. After 
having been put in the sun for a day, 
and tied into a knot, the straw is 
immersed in boiling water until it 
becomes white. It is then hung up 
in a shady place, and subsequently 
bleached for two or three days. The 
straw is now ready for use ; and in 
this state sent to different places, es¬ 
pecially to Peru, where the Indians 
manufacture from it those beautiful 
cigar cases, which have been some¬ 
times sold in Europe for thirty dollars 
apiece. The plaiting of the hats is 
very troublesome. It commences at 
the crown, and finishes at the brim. 
They are made on a block, which is 
placed upon the knees, and requires to 
be constantly pressed with the breast. 
According to their quality, more or 
less time is occupied in their comple¬ 


tion ; the coarser ones may be finished 
in two or three days, the finest take 
as many months. The best times for 
plaiting are the morning hours and 
the rainy season, Avhen the air is 
moist; in the middle of the day and 
in dry, clear weather, the straw is 
apt to break, which, when the hat is 
finished, is betrayed by knots, and 
much diminishes the value. 


MANUFACTURE OF BUTTONS. 


The first manufacturer of buttons in 
this country was Samuel Williston. 
While he was dragging along as a 
country storekeeper — his eyes having 
failed him while studying for the 
ministry — his wife bethought her that 
she could cover by hand the wooden 
buttons of the time, and thus earn an 
honest penny. From this the couple 
advanced in their ambition until they 
had perfected machinery for covering 
buttons, the first employed for the pur¬ 
pose in this country. From this sprang 
an immense factory, and then others, 
until Samuel Williston made half the 
buttons of the world. His factories are 
still running at Easthampton, coining 
wealth for the proprietors, and known 
to every dealer in buttons the world 
over. He is worth five or six millions, 
and has given $400,000 to Easthamp¬ 
ton for a seminary and for churches, 
$200,000 to the South Hadley Female 
Seminary, and $200,000 to Amherst 
College, besides lesser gifts. 


THE RICHEST MEN IN AMERICA. 

The three richest men in America 
were Wm. B. Astor, A. T. Stewart and 
Com. Vanderbilt, all residents of New 
York city. Astor’s wealth was mainly 
iu real estate and its revenues; Van- 








20 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


derbilt’s was mainly in railway stocks 
and their dividends; Stewart’s in goods, 
houses, stores, factories, lands, and 
stocks. William B. Astorwas born in 
New York on the 19th of September, 
1792. He died November 24tli, 1875, 
aged 83. His wealth was estimated at 
$60,000,000. A. T. Stewart was born 
October 12th, 1803, in the County of 
Tyrone, near Belfast, Ireland. He died 
April 10th, 1876, aged 73, worth at least 
$50,000,000. Cornelius Vanderbilt was 
born on Staten Island in May, 1794. 
He died January 4th, 1877, aged 83. 
His wealth was estimated from sixty 
to seventy-five millions. Astor lived 
unostentatiously; Vanderbilt lived in a 
three-story brick house on a third-class 
street; and Stewart lived in a marble 
palace on Fifth Avenue, more magnifi¬ 
cent than any other residence on the 
American continent, and equalled by 
few in any of the great cities in Eu¬ 
rope. Astor and Vanderbilt were New 
Yorkers by birth; Stewart was a native 
of the north of Ireland. Astor was a 
large, heavy man, with very strong 
features, and a rubicund face like 
parchment, and gave the impression 
of being hard-up. Vanderbilt was a 
tall, slim, proud-looking man, straight 
as an arrow. Astor had heirs to 
his estate; Vanderbilt had children 
to whom he left his fortune; but 
Stewart was childless. Astor’s public 
benefactions were confined to some¬ 
thing like a couple of hundred 
thousand dollars, which he gave to the 
Astor Library, and the two golden can¬ 
dlesticks, nine feet high, which he 
had given to Trinity Church. Van¬ 
derbilt never made any public bene¬ 
factions, excepting a steamship to the 
government during the war, till very 
recently, when he gave a million dol¬ 
lars for educational purposes—one- 
half of this sum to found a university 


in Tennessee, and the other half to an* 
other educational institution. Stewart 
always had the reputation of being close- 
fisted; but he should be credited with 
his million-dollar “Home for Women.” 
Astor was an independent Methodist, 
and Stewart was said to be inclined to 
thinking for himself. Stewart was a 
scholarly man; Vanderbilt was not; As¬ 
tor was an accomplished man of the 
the world. 


THE INFLUENCE OF FOOL. 


An excellent hint is given in the 
following item: Dr. Hall relates the 
case of a man who was cured of his bil¬ 
iousness by going without his supper 
and drinking freely of lemonade. Every 
morning, says the doctor, this patient 
arose with a wonderful sense of rest 
and refreshment, and feeling as though 
the blood had been literally washed, 
cleansed and cooled by the lemonade 
and fast. His theory is that food can 
be used as a remedy for many diseases 
successfully. As an example, he cures 
spitting of blood by the use of salt; 
epilepsy, by watermelons ; kidney affec¬ 
tions, by celery; poison, by olive or 
sweet oil; erysipelas, by pounded cran¬ 
berries applied to the part affected; 
hydrophobia, by onions, etc. So the 
way to keep in good health is really to 
know what to eat — and what medi¬ 
cines to teke. 


The origin of the word dun is 
that, at the time of King Henry VIII 
of England, there was a bailiff by the 
name of Joe Dunn, who was very suc¬ 
cessful in collecting doubtful debts. 
When every other resort had failed 
with debtors, creditors would threaten 
to send Dunn after them; until the 
name became a by-word. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


21 


HISTORY OF LAMPS. 


The invention of the lamp is as¬ 
cribed to the Egyptians. Its use was 
known in the days of Moses and Job. 
The applications of lamps passed from 
Egypt into Greece, where they were 
consecrated to Minerva, the goddess of 
learning, as indicative of the scholar’s 
nocturnal study. From Greece the use 
of lamps passed into Rome. Among 
the Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks and 
Romans, oil-lamps were generally used, 
and they vied with each other in the 
construction of these instruments. 
Some ot the specimens which have 
been preserved to the present time dis¬ 
play much taste and elegance of design. 
The interiors of all of them are rough 
and meagre. The first person who is 
known to have published a collection 
of ancient lamps is Tortunio Liceto, an 
Italian, whose chief design appears to 
have been to prove the possibility of 
constructing lamps that would burn 
forever. The sixth hall of the museum 
of Portici is now entirely filled with 
lamps and candelabra discovered in the 
houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum. 
It would appear that the ancients con¬ 
structed their earliest lamps of baked 
earth; but subsequently of various 
metals, bronze especially. There are a 
few ancient lamps of iron extant; but 
they are rare, either because that metal 
was little used for the purpose, or on 
account of its rapid decomposition in 
the ground. There are four specimens 
in the museum of Portici, and one 
specimen of a glass lamp which is en¬ 
tirely solid, and in one single piece. A 
golden lamp in the temple of Minerva, 
is mentioned by Pausanias; and St. 
Augustine speaks of lamps of silver. 
There was a strong belief among the 
ancient writers that perpetual lamps 
existed. Instances have been cited by 


various authors where lamps were 
found burning in ancient sepulchres, 
which were extinguished as soon as the 
air was admitted. The most remark¬ 
able instance is that of the tomb of 
Tulliola, daughter of Cicero, discovered 
at Rome in 1540. The notion in most 
of these cases probably arose from the 
inflammation of the hydrogen gas, 
which escaped from the tombs when 
opened. The lamps or candles used 
by the Jews in their own houses, were 
put into a high stand raised from the 
ground. Tbe lamps used by the wise 
and foolish virgins, mentioned in the 
New Testament, were of a different 
kind. Critics and antiquarians seem to 
agree that they were a kind of torches, 
made of iron or potter’s earth, wrapped 
about with linen, and moistened, from 
time to time, with oil. It was custom¬ 
ary among the Romans to have a lamp 
either hanging from the ceiling, or 
placed on a stand in the room. The 
simplest way in which a lamp can be 
formed is that practiced in making 
night-lights, to burn in a sick chamber: 
a small quantity of water is poured 
into a glass tumbler, or other vessel, 
and above that a quantity of oil; a 
piece of cork is then pierced so as to 
admit a few threads of cotton to pass 
through it, and the cork being placed 
upon the oil will float, the cotton 
threads will draw up the oil by capillary 
attraction and a feeble but clear light 
will be given. The antique lamps, 
spoken of before, many of which pos¬ 
sess great artistic beauty of form, can¬ 
not claim a higher construction than 
those of many rude nations. In gen¬ 
eral, they consist of a vessel, open or 
closed, with an unspun, round wick, 
which is held by a nozzle at the beak. 
As a combustion can only take place 
on the outside of the flame, more car¬ 
bon is likely to be liberated from the oil 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


22 


than the oxygen in contact with the 
flame can consume: hence, all lamps 
of this sort give a dim light, easily go 
out, and possess a smoky flame. The 
old kitchen-lamp had the beak removed 
to a considerable distance from the res¬ 
ervoir, so as to lessen the shadow cast 
by the flame, and increase the illumi¬ 
nating power. Amongst the northern 
nations of antiquity lamps were in use, 
but the difference in climate necessi¬ 
tated a different kind of lamp. The 
limpid oils of the present day were 
unknown to our Celtic and Saxon fore¬ 
fathers ; besides, the cold winters would 
have solidified them, and they would 
not have been drawn up by the wick 
as arranged in the old Roman and 
Greek lamps. The solid fat of vari¬ 
ous animals was their chief illumi¬ 
nating material, except on the sea- 
coast, where seal and whale oil occa¬ 
sionally helped them. Small, open 
stone pots, afterwards exchanged for 
metal, were used, and being partly 
filled with grease a wick was thrust 
down through the middle, and being 
lighted, consumed the fat as it was 
melted. However, all lamps continued 
to be dim, smoky, ill-made articles, 
soiling everything they came near, and 
filling the air with anything but an 
agreeable odor. Taste had been shown 
in the designs, but the principle re¬ 
mained the same. The most noted 
improvement was by a Swiss chemist 
named Argand, who was born at 
Geneva about the middle of the eight¬ 
eenth century. It is known as the 
Argand lamp. The wick of this lamp 
is in the form of a cylinder, through 
which a current of air passes. He 
made the first model of the lamp in 
England, in 1782, and added a glass 
chimney to it. A person named Quin- 
quest deprived him of the profit of the 
invention. Argand died in 1803. 


MUSIC HEREDITARY. 

Music hereditary shows itself more 
markedly, it would seem, in the arts 
than in the sciences. Taking music, 
we find some remarkable instances. 
The Bach family, which took its rise 
in 1550 and became extinct in 1800, pre¬ 
sents an unbroken series of musicians 
for nearly two centuries of that inter¬ 
val. The head of the family was Veit 
Bach, a baker of Pres burg, and his two 
sons, were the first of the family who 
were musicians by profession. The 
descendants literally “overran Thurin¬ 
gia, Saxony and Franconia,” says Papi- 
lion, “they were all organists, church 
singers, or what is called in Germany 
1 city musicians. 1 When they became 
too numerous to live all together, and 
the members of this family were scat¬ 
tered abroad, they resolved to meet 
once a year, on a stated day, with a 
view to keep up a sort of patriarchal 
bond of union. This custom was kept 
up until nearly the middle of the 
eighteenth century, and oftentimes 
more than one hundred persons bear¬ 
ing the name of Bach — men, women 
and children — were to be seen as¬ 
sembled. In the family are reckoned 
twenty-nine eminent musicians, and 
twenty-eight of a lower grade.” Ros¬ 
sini’s family played music at fairs; 
Beethoven’s father and grand-fatlier 
were musicians; Mozart’s father was 
Second Campellmeister to the Prince 
Bishop of Salzburg. 

Babbitt metal was invented by Isaac 
Babbitt, of Boston, and is used because 
it makes a good bearing without any 
fitting. Its composition, by weight, is: 
Tin 50 parts, antimony 5 parts, copper 
1 part. There are numerous other 
recipes for Babbitt metal of different 
grades, but this forms a good composi¬ 
tion for general use. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


23 


A CONDENSED HISTORY OF STEAM. 


About B. C., 230, Hero of Alexandria 
invented three different but simple con¬ 
trivances, showing the expansive pow¬ 
er ot steam, and in which rotary motion 
was produced by steam issuing from 
orifices, as water does in Barker’s mill. 

A. D., 450, Anthemius, an architect, 
arranged several caldrons of water, 
each covered with the wide bottom of 
a leather tube, which rose to a narrow 
top, with pipes extending to the rafters 
of the adjoining building. A fire was 
kindled beneath the caldrons, and the 
house was shaken by the efforts of the 
steam ascending the tubes. This is 
the first recorded notice of the power 
of steam. 

In 1543, a Spanish captain, named 
Blasco de Garay, showed, in the har¬ 
bor of Barcelona, a steamboat of about 
200 tons, his own invention. It con¬ 
sisted of a caldron of boiling water 
under a movable wheel on each side 
of the ship; but after a while was laid 
aside as impracticable. 

In 1562, the preacher, Mathesius, 
in his sermon to miners, prays for a 
man who “ raises water by fire and 
air,” showing the early application of 
steam-power in Germany. 

In 1601, G. della Porta invented an 
apparatus for raising water, by placing 
a tube into a close vessel, in which a 
vacuum had been obtained by conden¬ 
sation of steam. 

In 1615, Solomon de Caus, a French 
engineer, describes in one of his works, 
a steam engine, which was merely a 
contrivance for forcing the water con¬ 
tained in a copper ball through a tube 
by applying heat. 

In 1629, G. Branca, an Italian en¬ 
gineer, invented a sort of steam wind¬ 
mill; the steam being generated in a 
boiler, was directed by a spout against 


the flat vanes of a wheel, which was 
then set in motion. 

In 1647, Nye, an English mathema¬ 
tician, published a work, entitled u The 
Art of Gunnery,” in which he propos¬ 
es to u charge a piece of ordnance by 
putting water instead of powder, ram¬ 
ming down an air-tight plug of wood, 
and then the shot, and applying a 
fire to the breech till it burst out sud¬ 
denly.” 

The first successful effort in En¬ 
gland, was that of the Marquis of 
Worcester. In his “Century of In¬ 
vention,” 1655, he describes a steam 
apparatus by which he raised a column 
of water to the height of 40 feet. 
This with the exception of Biasco de 
Garay’s, was the first really useful ap¬ 
plication of steam; the others had been 
mere toys. 

In 1683, Sir Samuel Morland sub¬ 
mitted to Louis XIV., a project for 
raising water by means of steam. 

In 1698, Captain Savery obtained 
the first patent for the application of 
steam-power to various kinds of ma¬ 
chines. 

In 1703, Papin published his ideas, 
together with a drawing of an engine 
of his own construction, and to him is 
often attributed the origin of the idea 
of the cylinder and piston. 

In 1705, Thomas Newcoman carried 
out the principle of the piston in his 
atmospheric engine, for which he ob¬ 
tained a patent. This was the first 
engine that was made practically and 
extensively useful, and forms the trans¬ 
ition to the present steam-engine. 

In 1765, James Watt made the first 
perfect steam-engine, and which, with 
certain improvements patented in 1769 
and 1785, is essentially the same as the 
condensing engine now in use, and, in 
estimating some of the value of the 
benefits Watt conferred on the world, 







24 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Lord Jeffrey says : “It lias increased 
indefinitely the mass of human com¬ 
forts and enjoyments ; and rendered 
cheap and accessible, all over the world, 
the materials of wealth and prosperity. 
It has armed the feeble hand of man, 
in short, with a power to which no 
limits can be assigned; completed the 
dominion of mind over the most refrac¬ 
tory qualities of matter ; and laid a 
sure foundation for all those miracles of 
mechanic power which are to aid and 
reward the labors of after generations. 
It is to the genius of one ’man, too, 
that all this is mainly owing ! And 
certainly no man ever bestowed such 
a gift on his kind. The blessing is not 
only universal but unbounded ; and the 
fabled inventors of the plow and the 
loom, who were deified by the erring 
gratitude of their rude cotemporaries, 
conferred less important benefits on 
mankind than the inventor of our pres¬ 
ent steam-engine. This will be the 
fame of Watt with future genera¬ 
tions.” 

In the mean time, attempts had 
been making at steam navigation, in 
America, by Stevens, Livingston, and 
others. Robert Fulton, American, son 
of a Scotchman, and friend of Fitch 
and Rumsey, had thought of steam as 
a motive power for vessels as early as 
1793, and had his first working model 
put in operation at Plombieres, in 
France, in 1803. Traveling through 
Scotland, he visited the unfortunate 
“Charlotte Dundas,” and obtained 
drawings of her machinery. Return¬ 
ing to America with one of Bolton 
and Watt’s engines, of eighteen horse 
power, he, in conjunction with Liv¬ 
ingston, built a vessel called the “Cler¬ 
mont,” at New York, in 1807, and 
made the first really successful voyage 
by steam, from New York to Albany. 

The perfection of steam navigation 


belongs to no one man , or even genera¬ 
tion ; it is an honor in which a great 
number of men have, or ought to have, 
a share. Still, we must indisputably 
accord to Fulton the honor of having 
first proved the practical utility of 
steam navigation. 

Five years later (1812), Henry Bell, 
of Glasgow, who had witnessed the 
experiments on the canal in 1789, and 
had accompanied Fulton on his visit 
to the “ Charlotte Dundas,” started a 
steamboat, the “ Comet,” on the Clyde, 
and was thus the father of steam 
navigation in Britain. The success of 
the “ Comet ” was the means of mak¬ 
ing the Clyde to Glasgow what the 
Nile is to Egypt — a source of wealth 
and prosperity almost unexampled. 

As an incident of historical interest, 
the “ Clermont” steamed up the Hud¬ 
son on the 17th of August, 1807, with 
Fulton, a few friends, and six pass¬ 
engers, having left on the shore an 
incredulous and jeering crowd of peo¬ 
ple. Her dimensions were: Length, 
130 feet; width, 18 feet; depth, 7 feet; 
burden, 160 tons. She was provided 
with an engine from Boulton & Watt’s 
foundry, with cylinder 2 feet in diam¬ 
eter and 4 feet stroke ; boiler 20 feet 
long by 7 feet deep, and 8 feet broad. 
The diameter of the paddle-wheels 
was 15 feet; boards 4 feet long and 
dipping 2 feet in the water. 

The American Citizen , of August 
17th, 1807, says: 

“Mr. Fulton’s ingenious steamboat, 
invented with a view to the naviga¬ 
tion of the Mississippi, from New 
Orleans upward, sails to-day from the 
North River, near State’s Prison, to 
Albany. The velocity of the steam¬ 
boat is calculated at four miles an 
hour. It is said that it will make a 
progress of two against the current of 
the Mississippi, and, if so, it will cer¬ 
tainly be a very valuable acquisition to 
the commerce of the Western States. 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


On the return of the “ Clermont ” 
to New York, Mr. Fulton addressed 
the following letter: 

New York, August 21, 1807. 
To the Editor of the American Citizen: 

Sir: — I arrived this afternoon at 
four o’clock, in the steamboat from 
Albany. As the success of my experi¬ 
ment gives me great hope that such 
boats may be rendered of much im¬ 
portance to my country, to prevent 
erroneous opinions and to give satis¬ 
faction to the friends of these useful 
improvements, you will have the good¬ 
ness to publish the following facts: 

I left New York on Monday at 1 
o’clock, and arrived in Clermont, the 
seat of Chancellor Livingston, at 1 
o’clock on Tuesday : time, 24 hours ; 
distance, 110 miles ; on Wednesday, 1 
departed from the Chancellor’s at 8 
o’clock in the morning, and arrived at 
Albany at 5 o’clock in the afternoon : 
distance, 40 miles; time, 8 hours ! 
The sum of this is 150 miles in 32 
hours, equal near 5 miles an hour. 

On Thursday, at 9 o’clock in the 
morning, I left Albany, and arrived at 
the Chancellor’s at 6 in the evening. 
I started from thence at 7, and arrived 
in New York on Frida} 7 , at 4 in the 
afternoon : time, 30 hours ; space run 
through, 150 miles, equal to 5 miles an 
hour. Throughout the whole way, 
going and returning, the wind was 
ahead ; no advantage could be drawn 
from my sails. The whole has, there¬ 
fore, been performed by the power of 
the steam engine. 

I am, sir, your most obedient, 

Robert Fultoh. 

In 1786, the “ Father of European 
Steam Navigation ” had his mind 
strongly impressed with the . idea of 
propelling boats with paddles driven 
by steam power; a few years later, 
having become acquainted with a gen¬ 
tleman who had a pleasure boat, he 
granted Bell permission to place a 
boiler, with machines for the paddles 
on board. In 1800, Bell showed the 
British government “the practicabil- 


/v o 

ity and great utility of applying steam 
to the propelling of vessels against 
winds and tides, and every obstruction 
on rivers and seas, where there was 
depth of water,” but the Lords of the 
Admiralty were of opinion that the 
plan proposed would be of no value in 
promoting trans-marine navigation ! 
In 1803, a second application resulted 
in no better support. Bell then wrote 
to the American government on the 
great importance of steam navigation 
and its admirable adaptation to those 
noble rivers, and they appointed Fulton 
to correspond with him. In 1804, Ful¬ 
ton was employed by his government 
to proceed to England and take draw¬ 
ings of cotton and other machinery. 
Bell gave him plans, drawings and 
models of his intended steamboats, 
advised him to take on his return one 
of Boulton & Watt’s engines, which 
suggestion he acted on, and in 1807 
that same engine illustrated the folly 
of our grandfathers’ proverb, “No 
man can sail against wind and tide.” 

The success of Fulton put fresh life 
into Bell, and he employed an eminent 
ship-builder to build for him a boat of 
25 tons burden, and having himself 
built an engine of 3 horse power to 
which he applied the paddles. After 
several experiments, this “ fire-driven 
barque ” was placed on the station 
between Glasgow, Greenocli and Hel¬ 
ensburgh, making five miles an hour. 

The following copy of an advertise¬ 
ment appeared in the Glasgow papers : 

“THE STEAMBOAT COMET,” 
Between Glasgow, Greenoch and Hel- 

ensburg. 

For Passengers only. 

The subscriber having, at much ex¬ 
pense, fitted up a handsome vessel to 
ply upon the river Clyde, from Glas¬ 
gow, to sail by the power of air, wind 





26 - 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


and steam, he intends that the vessel 
shall leave Broomielaw on Tuesdays, 
Thursdays and Saturdays, about mid¬ 
day, or such hour thereafter as may 
answer from the state of the tide ; 
and to leave Greenoch on Mondays, 
Wednesdays and Fridays, in the morn¬ 
ing, to suit the tide. 

The elegance, safety, comfort and 
speed of this vessel require only to be 
seen to meet the approbation of the 
public; and the proprietor is deter¬ 
mined to do everything in his power 
to merit general support. 

The terms are for the present fixed 
at 4s. for the best cabin, and 3s. for 
the second ; but beyond these rates 
nothing is to be allowed to servants, 
or any person employed about the 
vessel. 

Passengers by the u Comet ” will 
receive information of the hours of 
sailing by apptying at Mr. Houston’s 
office, Broomielaw, or Mr. Thomas 
Blackney’s, East Quay Head. Grreen¬ 
och. HENRY BELL. 

Helensburgh Baths, August 5, 1812. 

The expressiveness of * k elegance, 
safety, comfort and speed,” as appiled 
by Henry Bell to his little u Comet,” 
has not been improved upon, but has 
remained the favorite wording in all 
Star Line advertising. Little did Bell 
imagine when developing this new and 
mighty power, that he was giving to 
the fickleness of winds and the faith¬ 
lessness of waves the certainty and 
steadiness of a highway upon the 
land, and to all nations keys to unlock 
every other kingdom on earth, to take 
our produce to every nation, and to 
bring in return the products of all 
climes. 

As a contrast, and to illustrate the 
progress made during the past seventy 
years in building river steamboats, we 
refer to the “ Drew,” built at New 
York in 1866, to ply between New 
York and Albany, alternately with her 
consort, the “ St. John,” and which is 


one of the most beautiful in appoint¬ 
ments and decorations of any boat on 
the North River. 

The floating palace is a trifle smaller 
than the “ St. John,” and cost, de¬ 
livered at the dock ready for service, 
a little over $800,000; is 366 teet 5 
inches in length, 77 feet 5 inches in 
breadth, 10 feet 9 inches depth of hold, 
draught when loaded 5 feet 6 inches, 
and registers 2,902 tons ; has 350 state 
rooms, and can accommodate 1,000 
sleeping passengers. 


APPLICATION OF STEAM TO NAVI¬ 
GATION. 


When once steam was known as a 
motive power, its application to navi¬ 
gation was obvious enough ; it was 
even to this purpose that the first 
recorded attempt was made to apply it 
at all — that of Blasco de Garay, in 
the harbor of Barcelona, in 1543. The 
only surprising question is, that thirty 
years should have elapsed — between 
1777, when the steam engine had be¬ 
come, in Watt’s hands, an efficient 
power for other purposes, and 1807, 
the date of Fulton’s first voyage — be¬ 
fore a really serviceable steam vessel 
was produced. Boats using revolving 
paddles instead of oars, and propelled 
by oxen, horses or men, were known 
to the Romans, and used for ferry¬ 
boats in modern times, and the great 
problem on which savants and illus¬ 
trious mechanics had been expending 
their inventive genius was the applica¬ 
tion of machinery for propulsion, and 
a power greater than animal or man¬ 
ual to drive that machinery. Watt 
showed how that egg could stand on 
the table. The world had now got 
the rotating engine, the crank connec¬ 
tion with a shaft, the revolving wheel, 









27 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the rotating paddles; but who was to 
turn all to practical uses P 

In 1736, Jonathan Hulls obtained in 
England a patent for a tow-boat, to 
be used by a paddle wheel, set in 
motion by a sort of steam engine. 
The project appears never to have been 
executed. 

In 1756, Gautier, a French mathe¬ 
matician, issued a treatise on “Navi¬ 
gation by Fire, 1 which attracted the 
attention of the Venetian Republic, 
and procured for him an invitation to 
the shores of the Adriatic ; he went, 
but death soon put an end to his labors. 
His theory, however, was practically 
exemplified in 1782, when the Marquis 
de Jouffrey constructed a steamboat of 
considerable size, which navigated the 
Soane for some time ; it was deficient, 
however, in power. 

From 1774 to 1790, the Count d’Aux- 
inon, the Brothers Periere, and others, 
in France, severally constructed and 
tried boats to be propelled by steam, 
none of which were successful. 

In 1783 to 1789, Fitch and Rumsey 
were experimenting in America, on 
constructing boats to work against 
streams; their first working models 
were propelled by manual labor, with 
setting poles attached to machinery, 
and for which Rumsey petitioned the 
Legislature of Pennsylvania, in 1784, 
for the exclusive right to this setting- 
pole boat. In 1785, both of these 
gentlemen had their attention directed 
to the use of steam as a motive power, 
and, in that year, Rumsey received 
from the legislatures of Virginia and 
Maryland the exclusive right to run 
steamboats on the waters of those 
States, while, next year, the States of 
Pennsylvania and New York granted 
the same exclusive right to Fitch. To 
reap the benefit of these exclusive 
rights, Rumsey began building his 


steamboat in May, 1785, tried her in 
December, and a defect in the machin¬ 
ery was discovered. In the Spring of 
1786, he made a successful experiment 
at Shepherdstown, with a boat of nine 
tons, working against the current of 
the Potomac at the rate of four or five 
miles an hour. Fitch, in 1786, con¬ 
structed his working model, and in 
1787 built a boat of sixty tons, called 
the “ Perseverance,” making the trip 
from Philadelphia to Burlington, and 
averaging six miles an hour. In 1790, 
he placed another and larger boat on 
the Delaware, which ran throughout 
the season, making regular trips at an 
average of seven and a half miles an 
hour. 

Six years afterward, Fitch moved a 
small boat on the Collect Pond, New 
York City, by a small engine and a 
worm-screw projecting from the stern 
of the boat; but neither of these 
experiments led to the general intro¬ 
duction of steam propulsion. 

In 1788, the next important experi¬ 
ment was that of Miller and Taylor, 
in Scotland, on board a double boat, 
with a paddle-wheel in the inter-space, 
was a perfect success, and led to the 
most decided step in the discovery of 
steam navigation previous to the final 
success of Fulton. Next year, Miller 
had large engines fitted into a vessel, 
and tried on the Forth and Clyde 
Canal, when the vessel moved at seven 
miles an hour. 

In 1801, Symington took out a 
patent for the construction of steam¬ 
boats, and, in 1803, built the “ Char¬ 
lotte Dundas,” to tow vessels on the 
Forth and Clyde Canal. The success 
was complete, but the agitation of the 
water by the paddles was found to 
wash down the banks in an alarming 
manner. The use of the vessel was 
therefore abandoned. 







28 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


HISTORY OF THE FIRST OCEAN 
STEAMER. 

It is but little over half a century 
since the first steam-ship crossed the 
ocean, and to certain of the citizens of 
Savannah, Georgia, the world is in¬ 
debted for her construction. She was 
built in New York, and finished in 
February, 1819, was 300 tons burden, 
clipper built, full rigged, and propelled 
by one inclined, direct-acting, low-pres¬ 
sure engine, similar to those now in 
use. The size of her cylinder was 40 
inch in diameter, with 6 ft. stroke, and 
carried 20 lbs. steam. The paddles 
were of wrought-iron, with only one 
flange, and entirely uncovered. They 
were so attached to the shaft that their 
removal and shipment on deck could 
be accomplished in from 15 to 20 min¬ 
utes, without occasioning the slightest 
inconvenience. She had two superb 
and elegant cabins for passengers — 
ladies' and gentlemen’s — the two be¬ 
ing separated, and both handsomely 
furnished. All her berths, 32 in num¬ 
ber, were state-rooms, and provided 
with every comfort. Her speed with¬ 
out sails is set down at 5 knots though 
vessels that passed her under steam and 
sail, in her voyage across the Atlantic, 
reported her movements at from 9 to 10 
knots. 

The u Savannah ” left New York for 
Savannah on the 28th of March, 1819, 
and arrived in that port on the 6th of 
April. Her arrival we find thus chron¬ 
icled in the Republican of the 7th of 
April, 1819 : 

44 The steamship 4 Savannah ’ arrived 
at our port last evening after a bois¬ 
terous passage of seven days from New 
York. On her approach to the city, 
hundreds of citizens flocked to the 
banks of the river, and while she as¬ 
cended, saluted her with long and loud 
huzzas! The utmost confidence is 
placed in her security. It redounds 


much to the honor of Savannah when 
it is said that it was owing to the en¬ 
terprise of some of her spirited citizens 
that the first attempt was made to 
cross the Atlantic ocean in a vessel 
propelled by steam. We sincerely hope 
the owners may reap a rich reward for 
their splendid and laudable undertak¬ 
ing.” 

The 44 Savannah ” left that port for 
an excursion trip to Charleston on the 
14th of April and returned on the 30th 
of the same month. The Republican , 
of the 4th of May, has the following 
announcement : 

4 ‘ PASSAGE TO NEW YORK. 

The steamship 4 Savannah,’ Captain 
Rogers, will make one trip to New 
York, previous to her departure for 
Liverpool, should a sufficient number 
of passengers offer, and will be ready 
to proceed in the course of this week 
or commencement of the next. Apply 
on board at Taylor’s Wharf, or to 

Scarbrough & McKinne.” 

But few or no passengers offering, 
she, on the 11th of May, took an ex¬ 
cursion party down to Tybee and the 
forts, returning to the city late in the 
afternoon. In the Republican of May 
19th we find the following advertise¬ 
ment : 

44 FOR LIVERPOOL. 

44 The steamship 4 Savannah,’ Cap¬ 
tain Rogers, will, without fail, proceed 
for Liverpool direct, to-morrow, 20th 
inst. Passengers, if any offer, can be 
well accommodated. Apply on board.” 

No passengers, however, offered ; 
and according to promise, the steamer 
weighed anchor on the 20tli of May, 
and set out on her voyage for Liverpool 
direct, an experiment hitherto untried 
in the history of the world. On June 
20th, after a voyage of 31 days, the 
44 Savannah” came to anchor in the 
port of Liverpool. During her pas¬ 
sage she worked her engine 18 days 
— it being found necessary, on so long 
a voyage, to economize fuel. She used 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


20 


pitch-pine ; the use of coal in Amer¬ 
ican steamers not having been intro¬ 
duced at that day. On nearing Liver¬ 
pool, the more effectually to astonish 
the Britishers, the wheels were restored 
to the shaft, all sails set, and she went 
into the Mersey amid the wildest as¬ 
tonishment of all beholders. 

Remaining at Liverpool a month, 
she sailed for St. Petersburg, her origi¬ 
nal destination, where Captain Rogers 
and his strange craft were received 
with every demonstration of respect 
and admiration. She remained at St. 
Petersburg for several weeks; then, 
turning her course westward, the bold 
little ship arrived in Savannah as she 
left it — in ballast — November 30th, 
after a voyage of 50 days from St. 
Petersburg, all well; and, to use Cap¬ 
tain Roger’s own language, “neither 
a screw, bolt, nor rope-yarn parted,” 
although she experienced very rough 
weather. 

In the month of December, the 
steamer visited Washington City, where 
she astonished the u collective wisdom,” 
and thence went to New York. 

Soon after her return to New York, 
the “ Savannah ” was divested of her 
steam apparatus, converted into a 
packet-ship of the same name, and ran 
for some years between Savannah and 
New York. 

Her final fate was a sad one. In one 
of her trips from Savannah to New 
York, she was driven ashore, in a 
storm, on Long Island, and went to 
pieces. 

The Canadians claim for their coun¬ 
try the credit and honor of the first 
ocean-transit by steam, alleging that 
the u Savannah ” could hardly be called 
a steamship, because her paddle wheels 
could be removed and present no im¬ 
pediment to her sailing powers; that 
after steaming a few days her paddle- 


wheels were unshipped, and taken on 
deck, the remainder of the distance 
having been performed under canvas; 
and that it neither demonstrated the 
utility, nor solved the problem of ocean 
steam-navigation, but, on the contrary, 
if any thing was proved, it was the 
non-adaptation of steam for oceanic 
traversing, as. on the return of the 
u Savannah,” she was converted into a 
sailing ship, and the further prosecu¬ 
tion of placing a locomotive pathway 
on the ocean abandoned, until 12 years 
later, in 1831, the steamship u Royal 
William ” was built at Three Rivers, 
in the Province of Quebec, was 160 
feet long, 44 feet broad, and 17 feet 9 
inches depth of hold, and registered 363 
tons — sailed from Quebec August 5, 
1833, for London, put into Pictou, and 
arrived at Gravesend about the 16th of 
September, in 25 days from latter port. 
She was afterward sold to and em¬ 
ployed by the Spanish or Portugese 
government as a ship-of-war. 


CONDENSED HISTORY OF ATLANTIC 
STEAM NAVIGATION. 

It was as late as 1836 that the cross¬ 
ing of the Atlantic Ocean, by steam- 
power alone, began to be seriously 
discussed. Those who looked at the 
subject from the scientific point of 
view, and discussed it philosophically, 
very generally gave a verdict against it; 
and even practical men, who had been 
engaged in the navigation of the Med¬ 
iterranean, and other short voyages, 
were almost unanimous in asserting 
that it could not be done, or, at least, 
that it could not be made commer¬ 
cially advantageous. The nicest calcu¬ 
lations, based on established principles 
and facts, were made to demonstrate 
the impracticability of the proposition. 

The following is a specimen of the 








30 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


reasoning, founded upon the use of 
steam in the government of Great 
Britian : u To accomplish a voyage of 
the same length as that across the 
Atlantic, two tons of coal will be used 
for each horse-power of the engines; 
that is to say, if the engines are of 300 
horse-power, they will consume 600 
tons of fuel before they reach the ter¬ 
minus of a 3,000 mile voyage. But a 
spare supply must also be carried, to 
provide against accident and delay; so 
that the quantity must be raised to 
700 tons. On the other hand, if the 
tonnage of the vessel be more than 
four times its horse-power, the latter 
will be inadequate to its propulsion at 
the ordinary rate of steamship. The 
tonnage of the vessel, therefore, could 
not exceed 1,200, and, after making 
allowance for cabins, machinery, boil¬ 
ers, ship’s stores, etc., the space left for 
fuel would not contain more than 500 
tons, which would be all consumed 
before the vessel arrived within five 
hundred miles of the Atlantic coast. 1 ' 

Probably nothing did more to settle 
the question of the impracticability of 
ocean steam-navigation, in the minds 
of scientific men, than the essay of a 
celebrated natural philosopher, who 
had made the steam-engine one of his 
studies for life, who proved to a demon¬ 
stration, that, in order to succesfully 
cross the Atlantic, a steamer must either 
have a tender, with a fresh supply of 
coal, or a depot somewhere in mid-ocean. 
But his essay did not convince prac¬ 
tical men, and it had scarcely been re¬ 
ceived and read in this country, before 
it was followed by the pioneers in the 
mighty fleet of steamers which have 
ever since been crowding the great 
thoroughfare of the nations. While 
the philosophers were proving to their 
own satisfaction that the Atlantic 
could not be crossed by steam, some 


practical men were engaged in con¬ 
structing, at Bristol, a steamship, 

— which for that day, was considered 
quite gigantic, and, on that account, 
was to be called the “ Great Western ’ 

— which should set at rest the discus¬ 
sion by proving whether the thing 
could be done or not. She was fin¬ 
ished in the spring of 1838, and was 
announced to sail for New York on the 
8th of April. She had a deck 230 feet 
long ; she was nearly 60 feet wide; 
her paddle-wheels were 28 feet in di¬ 
ameter, and her paddles 10 feet long. 
The horse-power of her engines was 
450; the weight of her boilers and 
machinery was 300 tons, and her car¬ 
rying tonnage 1,340. This was regard¬ 
ed, at that time, as an immense vessel, 
although small compared with num¬ 
bers of steamships constructed since, 
and her very size awakened apprehen¬ 
sions in regard to her safety. She was 
fitted up with elegance, and every 
temptation to passsengers to make the 
voyage in her was presented, but with 
little effect. Only seven were booked 
for the trial-trip. 

In the mean time, a plucky little 
rival had been preparing for a contest 
with the “Great Western" for the 
honor of first crossing the ocean. The 
“ Sirius," a small steamship, built to 
ply between London and Cork, actually 
got the start, and, leaving the latter 
port, was three days at sea before the 
u Great Western " sailed. The “ Siri¬ 
us" left Cork on the 5tli of April, 
1838, and the “Great Western" left 
Bristol on the 8th. Both ships were 
bound for New York, and it is not a 
little remarkable that the first experi¬ 
ment of crossing the Atlantic, in this 
manner, should be in reality a trial of 
speed between two steamers. Nor has 
there been a much more hotly-con¬ 
tested, or a more exciting race, on the 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


31 


ocean since that time. The “ Sirius ” 
steamed out of port in the very teeth 
of a strong westly wind, and a hard 
time she had of it during the first few 
days of the voyage. The elements 
seemed to have conspired to oppose 
her progress. First it blew a strong 
gale from the west that raised a heavy 
sea; then the wind chopped round, 
until it had completely boxed the com¬ 
pass, and tried all its power in fresh 
gales; and then it blew as strong as 
ever from the west, as if to make a last 
effort to stop the course of the gallant 
little ship. But all was of no avail. 
The “ Sirius ” held on her way right 
valiantly, and, getting lightened of her 
coal, she gained speed, until she reached 
218 miles a day, and, on the morning 
of the 23d of April, she reached New 
York. The u Great Western ” was on 
a stern-chase, which is always a long 
chase, hut, from the first day out until 
the end of her voyage, she performed 
nobly. She made 10 miles an hour the 
second day, and her daily average 
speed, during the entire voyage, was 
211 miles. She thus gained rapidly 
upon her competitor, but the three 
days 1 start decided the question, and 
the “ Great Western ” entered the har¬ 
bor on the afternoon of the same day 
as the “ Sirius,” being thus only a few 
hours behind. The time occupied by 
these two vessels, in their voyages out, 
was 181- and 14^ days respectively. 
Although the duration of their pas¬ 
sages was widely different, both vessels 
consumed, as nearly as possible, the 
same quantity of fuel, namely, 453 
tons. The “ Sirius ” had exactly this 
quantity of coal on board when she 
leff Cork, and would have entered New 
York harbor without a particle of this 
precious commodity remaining, had 
she not used, toward the end of her 
journey, as an equivalent for 23 tons of 


coal, 43 barrels of rosin. The first 
fruitful steam-voyage across the Atlan¬ 
tic was made bv the “ Sirius.” Like its 
«/ 

namesake in the heavens, the “ Sirius,” 
was, upon the waters, a star of the first 
magnitude; and, at this distance ol 
time, we can say that its appearance 
did not herald the malign influences 
popularly ascribed to the great dog- 
star, but that this “Sirius” upon the 
Atlantic resembled the summer rising 
Sirius upon the Nile, the harbinger of 
overflowing prosperity on either shore. 

Yery many will remember the ex¬ 
citement which prevailed in New York 
when the time drew nigh for the 
arrival of the “ Great Western,” as the 
date of her sailing had been advertised. 
There was much incredulity in regard 
to the success of the experiments ; and 
few, perhaps, had any strong confi¬ 
dence that she would ever turn up on 
this side of the water. But every day 
crowds were on the Battery, looking 
out for the first signs of her appear¬ 
ance, and when, on the morning of 
the 23d of April, a smoke was descried 
in the distance, the anxiety to know 
whether it was the steamer was quick¬ 
ened, and when one actually appeared, 
and began to loom up as no ordinary 
craft had done in our waters before, 
the excitement became intense. The 
report soon spread through the city, 
the crowd increased, and when the 
“Sirius” sailed up and quietly dropped 
her anchor in the North River, cheer 
upon cheer rent the air. The same 
excitement was renewed in the after¬ 
noon upon the arrival of the “ Great 
Western.” Streaming with flags, and 
crowded with people who had gone on 
board, the “ Sirius ” lay waiting the 
arrival of her competitor; and, as the 
“ Great Western ” steamed in, three 
hearty cheers were given by all on 
board, and a salute of twenty-six guns 





32 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


was tired from the Battery. As the 
vessel drew up to the dock, says the 
journal of one of the seven passengers, 
“boats crowded around us in coun¬ 
tless confusion, flags were flying, guns 
firing, and bells ringing. The vast 
multitude sent up a shout, a long, 
enthusiastic cheer, echoed from point 
to point, and from boat to boat, till it 
seemed as though they never would 
have done.” This was only fifty-one 
years ago, and now steamships are 
crossing the ocean in such numbers 
that it has become like a grand ferry, 
in which steamers are almost jostling 
one another, and a broken voyage is a 
rare occurrence. The result of this 
experiment in ocean navigation has 
taught us this important lesson, that 
no enterprise must be pronounced im¬ 
practicable until it has been actually 
and effectually tried. 

The year 1838 was, therefore, a mem¬ 
orable one in the history of steam 
navigation, and at that time no mind 
could have conceived, no man would 
have dared to utter, the prediction 
that in the } 7 ear 1880 thousands of 
steamers would leave European for 
American shores and a like number 
leave America for Europe. Yet such 
is the fact. Not only on the Atlantic, 
but on every sea and ocean, the 
steamer is rapidly displacing the sail¬ 
ing vessel. The splendid frigate ship, 
the pride of the old East India Com¬ 
pany, and the beautiful American- 
China clipper, whose performances 
were the talk the world over, have 
nearly all disappeared before the 
encroaching steamer. The improve¬ 
ments in steaming have fully kept up 
with its expansion. Efficiency in con¬ 
struction has been so much improved, 
and the consumption of fuel so greatly 
lessened by new inventions connected 
with steam engines, that the longest 


routes can be traversed without stop¬ 
ping for coals, while passengers can 
be insured fresh provisions for the 
whole voyage. The substitution of 
the screw for the paddle-wheel, and 
the superseding of wood by iron in 
the construction of the hulls, have 
materially aided to accomplish this 
result. But, as u we are bound to 
maintain that the art of invention is 
capable of growing as inventions do,” 
more will yet be accomplished. The 
substitution of gaseous, subtile, or 
liquid fuel for coal, and the combina¬ 
tion of more economical engines, with 
a lighter material for hulls, such as 
steel, will, in a short time, entirely re¬ 
revolutionize the ocean carrying trade 
of the world. 

RAILROADS. 

Condensed History of Locomotion. 

Railroads were not built, as is gener¬ 
ally supposed, as pathways for locomo¬ 
tives ; the latter are of modern inven¬ 
tion, while railroads, or tramways, as 
they were at first called, have been 
used for centuries in transporting min¬ 
eral products from mines to places of 
shipment. The first railways were 
merely wooden wheehvays laid in the 
ordinary roads to lessen the friction, 
and render the work easier for the 
horse; prior to which, hard, smooth¬ 
surfaced, and solid track-ways, con¬ 
structed of blocks of stone closely 
fitting together, were used for facilita¬ 
ting the transport of heavy loaded 
wheeled vehicles. Timber rails were 
used for one hundred and fifty years, 
when in 1767 the experiment was tried 
of covering the wooden rails of a tram- 
road with a plating of iron. The 
experiment was successful, and a few 
years afterward rails wholly of cast 
iron began to be constructed. In 1793 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


33 


wooden sleepers were superseded by 
stone ones. Until 1801, the rails were 
all of the kind called flat rail, or tram- 
plate with a flange or turn-up on the 
inside. About that year edge-rails 
began to be used, the flange then being 
cm the wheel. 

About the year 1800 a thoughtful 
Scotchman stood looking at a small 
train of coal-wagons impelled by steam 
along a tramroad which connected the 
mouth of one of the collieries in the 
north of England with the wharf at 
which the coals were shipped. “ Why,” 
he asked of a bystander, u are not these 
tramroads laid down all over Britain, 
so as to supersede our common roads, 
and steam-engines employed to convey 
goods and passengers along with them, 
so as to supersede horse-power ? ” 

The bystander replied: “Just you 
propose that to the nation, sir, and see 
what you will get by it! Why, sir, 
you will be worried to death for your 
pains.” 

Nothing more was said, but the 
intelligent traveler could think of 
nothing by day, nor dream of anything 
by night, but tramroads, locomotive 
steam-engines, horse-power superseded! 
The idea he had conceived continued to 
infest his brain, and would not be 
driven out. Tramroads, locomotive 
steam-engines, horse-power superseded! 
— he would talk of nothing else with 
his friends. At length he broached 
the scheme openly; hardly anybody 
would listen to him; still he perse¬ 
vered, dinning into the public ears the 
same wearisome words, receiving little 
encouragement from statesmen and 
politicians, and none from theoretical 
philosophers. But at length a few 
commercial men began to be interested 
in his plan, and the consequence was, 
that railways have been constructed 
and are in progress in all parts of the 


civilized world. Philosophers specu¬ 
late on the astonishing effects which 
such a means of rapid locomotion must 
have on the character and prospects of 
the whole human race; by means of 
railways distant countries become famil¬ 
iar to all, and the only question is, 
where will this railway impulse end ? 
Into what strange condition of human¬ 
ity is it leading us ? And the begin¬ 
ning of all this was the dream of a 
thoughtful man, looking, about some 
seventy years ago, at some coal-wagons 
running along a tramroad to a wharf. 
He explained his scheme to the public 
in the work entitled “ Observations on 
a General Iron Railway, or Land Steam 
Conveyance, to supersede the necessity 
of horses in all public vehicles ; show¬ 
ing its vast superiority in every respect 
over all the present pitiful methods of 
conveyance by turnpike roads, canals, 
and coasting traders, containing every 
species of information relative to rail¬ 
roads and locomotive engines.” 

The first record we have of rails be¬ 
ing used on road ways was in 1630, but 
it was not until the year 1800 that the 
idea of employing them for general 
purposes of traffic was suggested. For 
twenty years thereafter horse-power 
alone was used. On the 18th of No¬ 
vember, 1822, the first locomotive, and 
on the 29th of September, the first pas¬ 
senger coach that ever run on a rail¬ 
road, started on its experimental trip 
(with the directors and their friends,) 
on the opening of the Stockton & Dar¬ 
lington Coalroad Railway. Mr. W. H. 
Brown, in his history of the first loco¬ 
motive in America, says ; “ This vehi¬ 
cle was named the ‘ Experiment, 1 and 
was a very modest and uncouth-look¬ 
ing affair, made more for strength than 
beauty ; a row of seats ran along each 
side of the interior, and a long table 
was fixed in the center, the access be- 




34 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


mg by a door-way in the rear end, like 
an omnibus of the present day, and 
was the only carriage upon the road 
for some time. It was. however, the 
forerunner of a mighty traffic, and 
soon after, newer and more improved 
passenger carriages were introduced 
upon the road, all at first drawn by 
horses. 

“ The first railway coach, the 1 Ex¬ 
periment,’ was regularly put on the 
road for passenger use on the 10th of 
October, 1825. It was drawn by one 
horse, and performed a journey each 
way daily between the two towns — 
twelve miles — in two hours. This 
novel way of traveling soon became 
popular, and eventually proved so lu¬ 
crative and extensive that the carriage 
could not contain the applicants for a 
ride. Inside and outside it was crowd¬ 
ed and every available spot was occu¬ 
pied. The ‘Experiment,’ however, was 
not worked by the railway company as 
passenger cars are now, but was let to 
other parties, they paying a certain 
toll for the use of the road. It soon 
became a lucrative business; hotel 
keepers and others embarked in the 
enterprise, and a strong opposition was 
raised up between the rival OAvners or 
companies.” 

At the completion of the Liverpool 
and Manchester Railroad, in 1829, the 
directors had not determined whether 
to use horse or steam power, and if 
the latter, whether stationary or loco¬ 
motive engines. The road was only 
forty miles in length, yet it had cost 
four million dollars ! Although horse 
power had many advocates, steam 
carried the day; and to determine 
whether to use stationary or loco¬ 
motive engines, a prize of £500 was 
' offered for an engine to be ready by a 
certain time, and be able to fulfill cer¬ 
tain conditions; one of which was, 


that the engine must draw twenty 
tons weight at a speed of ten miles 
an hour, it not being considered safe 
to travel at a greater speed. So ab¬ 
surd was the project and its conditions 
considered, that an eminent Liverpool 
gentleman remarked that “ only a par¬ 
cel of charlatans would have issued 
such a set of conditions; that it had 
been proved to be impossible to make 
a locomotive engine to go ten miles 
an hour, but, if it was ever done, he 
would undertake to eat a stewed en¬ 
gine wheel for his breakfast.” George 
Stephenson constructed his far-famed 
“ Rocket ” engine, entered on the con¬ 
test, won the prize, and determined 
the question of the use of locomotive 
power, not only on the Liverpool and 
Manchester road, but on all future 
railroads, achieving results predicted 
by Dr. Anderson, of Edinburgh, Avhen 
advocating, in 1800, a proposition to 
build railroads for the transportation 
of freight and passengers, he said: “ If 
we can diminish only one single 
farthing in the cost of transportation 
and personal inter-communication, and 
you at once widen the circle of inter¬ 
course ; you form, as it were, a new 
creation — not only of stone and earth, 
of trees and plants, but of men also; 
and, what is of far greater conse¬ 
quence, you promote industry, happi¬ 
ness and joy. The cost of all human 
consumption would be reduced, the far- 
cilities of agriculture promoted ; time 
and distance would be almost annihi¬ 
lated ; the country would be brought 
nearer to the town; the number of 
horses to carry on traffic Avould be 
diminished; mines and manufactories 
would appear in neighborhoods hith¬ 
erto considered almost isolated by dis¬ 
tance ; villages, towns, and even cities, 
would spring up all through the coun¬ 
try ; and spots now silent as the grave 




THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


35 


would be enlivened with, the busy hum 
of human voices, the sound of the 
hammer, and the clatter of machinery; 
the whole country would be, as it 
were, revolutionized with life and 
activity, and general prosperity would 
be the result of this mighty auxiliary 
to trade and commerce throughout the 
land.” 

The first railroad built in the United 
States was in 1827, from the Quincy 
quarries (Massachusetts) to the river, 
and extended three miles. The next 
was from the coal mines at Mauch 
Chunk to the Lehigh River, which 
was nine miles in length, and ivas 
built in 1827-28. 

Next year the Delaware and Hudson 
Canal Company constructed a road 
from their coal mines at Honesdale to 
their canal. 

On the 4th of July, 1828, Charles 
Carroll, of Carrollton, the only survi¬ 
vor of the signers of the Declaration 
of Independence, and then over ninety 
years of age, commenced the construc¬ 
tion of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 
by laying, amid appropriate and im¬ 
posing ceremonies, a corner stone, at 
which he is reported to have said : “ I 
consider this among the most impor¬ 
tant acts of my life, second only to 
my signing the Declaration of In¬ 
dependence, if even second to that.” 
This road was the first established in 
the United States for commercial pur¬ 
poses and the transportation of passen¬ 
gers and freight; it was finished in 
1852, and at that time was the longest 
railroad in the world. 

In the same year (1828) was organ¬ 
ized and commenced the South Carolina 
or Charleston and Hamburg Railroad, 
the first in the world built expressly 
for locomotive power, and for general 
freight and passenger business , and 
on which, two years afterward, ran 


the first and second locomotives that 
ever were built in America for actual 
service on a railroad. This road had 
also the honor of having laid the first 
hundred consecutive miles of iron rails 
ever laid on any road. 

The first excursion trip with a train 
of passenger coaches, in the State of 
New York, was on the Mohawk and 
Hudson Railroad, from Albany to 
Schenectady, on August 9, 1831. Be¬ 
fore the train started, a sketch of the 
locomotive, tender and the first two of 
the number of cars in the train, and 
correct likenesses of the engineer and 
passengers represented in the cars, was 
made by William H. Brown, one of 
the excursionists, cut out of black pa¬ 
per with a pair of scissors. The orig¬ 
inal picture which was presented by 
the artist to the Connecticut Histor¬ 
ical Society, was about six feet in 
length, and is yet preserved by the 
Society and highly prized for its an¬ 
tiquity and truthfulness. 

It is only fifty years since the first 
ocean steamer found its way across the 
Atlantic. At that time only 1,431 
miles of railway had been constructed. 
There are at this time 155,000 miles in 
operation, with engines double in speed 
and quadrupled in power, working 
night and day transporting the vast 
products of the globe. In the way of 
comparison between the old-fashioned 
stage-coach body pattern of fifty years 
ago, and the splendid drawing-room, 
sleeping and dining-room, saloon pal¬ 
ace cars, and the late improved vesti¬ 
bule cars of to-day, can it be possible 
to travel with any more luxury, ease 
and comfort than when drawn by the 
fastest locomotives in the world, and 
with' the facilities for carrying our 
mail in a fraction of the time taken 
heretofore? Will this be eclipsed in 
the next fifty years? 




36 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


HOW BIRDS LEARN TO SING AND 

BUILD. 


What is instinct ? It is the “ fac¬ 
ulty of performing complex acts 
absolutely without instruction or pre¬ 
vious^ acquired knowledge.” In¬ 
stinct, then, would enable animals to 
perform spontaneously acts which, in 
the case of man, pre-suppose ratiocina¬ 
tion, a logical train of thought; but 
when we test the observed facts which 
are usually put forward to prove the 
power of instinct, it is found that they 
are seldom conclusive. It was on such 
grounds that the song of birds was 
taken to be innate ; albeit a very ready 
experiment would have shown that it 
comes from the education they receive. 
During the last century, Barrington 
brought up some linnets, taken from 
the nest in company with larks of 
sundry varieties, and found that every 
one of the linnets adopted completely 
the song of the master set over them, 
so that now those linnets — larks by 
naturalization — form a company apart 
when placed among birds of their own 
species. Even the nightingale, whose 
native sound is so sweet, exhibits, 
under domestication, a considerable 
readiness to imitate other singing 
birds. The song of the bird is, there¬ 
fore, determined by its education, and 
the same must be true of nest build¬ 
ing. A bird brought up in a cage does 
not construct the nest peculiar to its 
species. In vain will you supply all 
the necessary materials ; the birds will 
employ them without skill, and will 
oftentimes even renounce all purpose 
of building anything like a nest. 
Does not this well known fact prove 
that, instead of being guided by in¬ 
stinct, the bird learns how to construct 
the nest, just as a man learns to build 
a house ? 


HISTORY OF STOCKINGS. 


These, as now made, are compara¬ 
tively a modern invention. The art of 
knitting them by hand, with long 
wire needles, is supposed by some to 
have come originally from Spain, al¬ 
though it is not ascertained that it was 
invented in that country. A company 
of stocking knitters was established in 
Paris in 1527. 

Previous to the time of Henry 
VII., knitted silk stockings were un¬ 
known in England; and Stowe ob¬ 
serves, in his Chronicle, “for you shall 
understand that King Henry VIII. did 
wear only cloath hose, or hose cut out 
of ell broad taffeta ; or that by great 
chance there came a pair of Spanish 
silk stockings from Spaine.” Thus, al¬ 
though silk stockings had been brought 
into England prior to the reign of Ed¬ 
ward VI., yet we find Stowe commem¬ 
orating as “ a great present ” a “ long 
pay re of Spanish silk stockings ” that 
Sir Thomas Gresham presented to that 
king. Thus, they were articles of 
great rarity and value in the time of 
Queen Elizabeth, for we are informed 
by Stowe, “ in 1560, her silk woman, 
Mistris Mountague, presented her maj- 
estie with a payre of black knit silk 
stockings for a new year’s gift; the 
which, after a few days’ wearing, pleased 
her highness so well that she sent for 
Mistris Mountague and asked her 
where she had them, and if she could 
help her to any more ; who answered, 
saying, ‘I have them very carefully 
on purpose, only for your majestie; 
and seeing those please you so well, I 
will presently set more in hand.’ 4 Do 
so,’ quoth the queen, 1 for indeed I like 
silk stockings so well, because they 
are so pleasant, fine and delicate, that 
henceforth I will wear no more cloth 
stockings.’ ” 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


37 


Stockings continued long to be knit 
by hand in the various countries in 
Europe, and the machine at present 
used to weave them, called the stock¬ 
ing loom, was invented in 1589, by 
Mr. William Lee, a native of Wood- 
borough, near Nottingham. This ma¬ 
chine, to any one who attentively 
considers its complex operation, and 
the elegant sleight with which it forms 
its successive rows of loops or stitches, 
will appear to be one of the most re¬ 
markable strides ever made in mechan¬ 
ical invention. Notwithstanding, Lee 
met with no encouragement in En¬ 
gland ; Queen Elizabeth, the patroness 
of art, was then in her decline; and 
her successor, James, did not perceive 
the value or importance of manufact¬ 
ure. 

The encouragement refused by King 
James was offered by Henry IV., 
of France, and his sagacious minister, 
Sully. Under their patronage, Lee 
settled at Rouen, where he established 
his manufacture; but being envied by 
the inhabitants of that place, whose 
genius he had eclipsed, he was pro¬ 
scribed as a Protestant; and, concealed 
in Paris, he ended his days in secret 
grief and disappointment. Some of 
his workmen made their escape to En¬ 
gland, and restored the invention to 

its native countrv. It was in Leices- 

%/ 

tershire, and the neighboring counties 
of Nottingham and Derby, that the 
first manufactories were established, 
and laid the foundation of the hosiery 
trade of that district. 

The invention of the stocking frame 
by Lee enabled the English manufact¬ 
urers to export vast quantities of silk 
hose to Italy, where they retained 
their superiority for a long time; for 
Keysler, in his travels through Eu¬ 
rope, so late as 1730, remarks that 
“at Naples, when a tradesman would 


highly r<-commend his stockings, he 
protests they are right English.” 

In 1758, Jedadiah Strutt, of Becher, 
near Derby, invented a machine for 
making ribbed stockings; and the 
spinning machine of Arkwright was 
successfully applied to the manufact¬ 
ure of cotton stockings. 


WOOD BOOKS. 


In the museum at Cassel, Germany, 
is a library made from five hundred 
European trees. The back of each 
volume is formed of the bark of a tree, 
the sides of the perfect wood, the top 
of young wood, and the bottom of old. 
When opened, the book is found to be 
a box, containing the flower, seed, fruit 
and leaves of the tree, either dried or 
imitated in wax. At the Melbourne 
Colonial Exhibition of 1866, Colonel 
Clamp exhibited specimens of Victo¬ 
rian wood converted into small boxes 
of book form, according to a design 
suggested by that gentleman at the 
Victorian Exhibition of 1851, and then 
suggested by Baron Ferd. Mueller. 
Nothing could be more convenient and 
more interesting than a library (to 
speak allegorically) of such imitation 
books, representing the different tim¬ 
bers of various countries, which could 
be systematically, or alphabetically, or 
geographically arranged. Australia 
alone could furnish of such a collec¬ 
tion more than a thousand volumes. 
At the Paris exhibition of 1867, Rus¬ 
sia showed a similar collection of wood¬ 
en works, cleverly designed, showing 
the bark as the back binding, and let¬ 
tered with the popular and scientific 
names of the wood. Each book con¬ 
tained samples of the leaves and fruit 
of the tree, and a section and shaving, 
or veneeer of the wood. 








38 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


BANK NOTES.—HOW THEY ARE EN¬ 
GRAVED. 


The fancy net-work of lines and cir¬ 
cles composing the ornate patterns of 
border, ends and dies on the bank plate, 
are all engraved by the “Geometric 
Lathe” (the discovery of which is the 
wonder of the Nineteenth Century,) 
which is composed of thousands of fine 
cast steel cog wheels. Every line or 
circle engraved, will be fine, sharp and 
clear, of one even size and as true as if 
struck by a compass. The artist oper¬ 
ating the Lathe is obliged to change 
the wheels for engraving dies of thous¬ 
ands of various patterns. 

The ornamental engraving is exe¬ 
cuted on plates of softened polished 
steel. The steel plate is placed upon a 
revolving carriage in the Lathe a 
sharp-pointed steel graver attached to 
the machinery, extends to the plate, 
governed by cams, eccentrics and 
moving centers. 

The artist places his foot upon the 
treadle, which sets the machine in mo¬ 
tion. The graver sinks into the re¬ 
volving plate, geometric, eccentric and 
concentric circles — all interwoven in 
beautiful net-work so exactly true in 
every particular that no human hand 
can ever compete. The gravers are all 
of the same size, and move with a firm, 
steady stroke, graving every line and 
circle of the same depth and width, 
and in every genuine bank note, the 
net-work of white lines will be of an 
exact size. 

When an engraving is finished, it is 
inspected by an artist officer, whose 
duty it is to inspect all bank note en¬ 
graving, and should he allow one im¬ 
perfect object to be transferred to a 
bank plate, he would be discharged for 
incompetency. 

If the engraving is perfect it is 


hardened hard as razor steel, then 
placed into the transfer press, and by 
passing under a roller with thirty tons 
weight upon it, the design is trans¬ 
ferred to another plate. That plate is 
hardened and placed upon the press 
and transfers its design to a soft steel 
cylinder, which is hardened and ready 
to convey its device to the bank 
plate. 

Counterfeit notes are printed from 
raw hand engravings; the entire die 
being, often, a mixture of dots like 
salt and pepper. The lines, if any, are 
coarse and broken, mixed together, dull, 
blurred and clogged in the angles of 
the net-work, like a fish-net. It shows 
the hand work in trying to imitate this 
Lathe work. 

On all genuine notes, the shading of 
the letters looks fine, sharp and clear. 
This is engraved by the ruling engine 
with the same sized line found in the 
net-work of a die. The lines are even, 
and spaced an exact distance apart, 
entirely straight, leaving a clear, sharp, 
white streak between each line. 

Counterfeit shading is dim and faint, 
being engraved by hand, and each line 
is dulled and blurred because it par¬ 
takes of the trembling motion of the 
human hand. 

Engraving for likenesses must be 
clear, expressive and life-like, showing 
the white and black of the eyes clearly 
— the nose, lips, chin, and every fea¬ 
ture perfect and well developed. No¬ 
tice particularly the fine texture of the 
skin, which has never been successfully 
counterfeited. It is composed of fine 
even dots upon the forehead, and is set 
in perfect dots and lines intermixed 
upon the face, neck and arms. There 
are short, fine lines upon the face, neck 
and limbs, crossing each other at very 
acute angles, forming what is techni¬ 
cally called flesh work. It serves to 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


39 


round the features and limbs so as to 
look life-like. 

In fact, counterfeiters can never pro¬ 
duce a note that will at all compare 
with the genuine, unless with the aid 
of the Geometrical Lathe. 


THE FIRST FLAG. 

The construction of the first na¬ 
tional standard of the United States, 
as a design, from which the “ Stars and 
Stripes 11 was afterward adopted, took 
place under the personal direction of 
General Washington, aided by a com¬ 
mittee of Congress u authorized to 
design a suitable flag for the nation, 17 
at Philadelphia, June, 1777. 

This took place at the residence of 
Mrs. Ross, a relative of Colonel Ross, 
in Arch street, between Second and 
Third, where General Washington and 
the committee completed the design, 
and employed Mrs. Ross to execute 
the work. The house is still standing 
(239). Mrs. Ross was afterward Mrs. 
Claypool. Her maiden name was 
Griscom, and according to the fashion 
of the time, she was called “ Betsy. 17 

Betsy Griscom had, before the Revo¬ 
lution, acquired some knowledge of 
the “upholder” trade, as it was then 
called — an occupation synonymous 
with the modern upholster — and, at 
the time mentioned, was carrying on 
business on her own account in her 
little shop. One day, probably be¬ 
tween the 23d of May and the 7th 
of June, 1777, during which period 
Washington was in Philadelphia, there 
came to her the commander-in-chief, 
the Hon. George Ross, and other gen¬ 
tlemen, members of Congress, who 
desired to know whether she could 
make them a flag according to a design 
which they would produce. She inti¬ 
mated her willingness to try. The 


design was for a flag of thirteen red 
and white stripes, alternate with thir¬ 
teen six-pointed stars. Mrs. Ross ex¬ 
pressed her willingness to make the 
flag, but suggested that the stars would 
be more symmetrical and pleasing to 
the eye, if made with five points, and 
showed them how such a star could 
be made, by folding a piece of paper 
and producing the pattern by a single 
cut. Her plan was approved, and she 
at once proceeded to make the flag, 
which was finished the next day. Mrs. 
Ross was given the position of manu¬ 
facturer of flags for the government, 
and for some years she was engaged 
in that occupation. The business 
descended to her children, and was 
carried on by her daughter, Clarissa 
Claypool, who voluntarily relinquished 
it on becoming a member of the Society 
of Friends, lest her handiwork should 
be used in time of war. 


LARGE BELLS. 

In making large bells, loudness rather 
than pitch is the object, as the sound 
can be conveyed to a much further 
extent. This accounts for the enor¬ 
mous weight of some of the largest 
bells. St. Paul’s, London, weighs 
13,000 pounds; and the bell of Ant¬ 
werp, 16,000 pounds; Oxford, 17,000 
pounds ; bell at Rome, 19,000 pounds ; 
Mechlin, 20,000 pounds; Bruges, 23,- 
000 pounds; York, 24,000 pounds; 
Cologne, 25,000 pounds; Montreal, 
29,000 pounds ; Erfurt, 30,000 pounds ; 
“ Big Ben ” at the house of Parlia¬ 
ment, 31,000 pounds; Sens, 34,000 
pounds ; Vienna, 40,000 pounds ; Nov- 
gored, 69,000 pounds; Pekin, 139,000 
pounds; Moscow, 141,000 pounds. 
But, as yet, the greatest bell ever 
known is another famous Moscow bell, 
which was never hung. It was cast 









40 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


by the order of the Empress Anne in 
1653. It lies broken on the ground, 
and is estimated to weigh 443,772 
pounds. It is nineteen feet high, and 
measures around the margin sixty-four 
feet. There are few hells of interest 
in the United States. The heaviest is 
probably the alarm hell on the City 
Hall, in New York, weighing about 
23,000 pounds. 


HISTORY OF CHLOROFORM. 

The story of the discovery of the 
properties of chloroform in England is 
this: A Mr. Waldie, a chemist and 
bookseller at Linlithgow, had one day 
some of the liquid in a saucer, when a 
gentleman entered the shop with a 
little dog. The chloroform was placed 
on the ground to be out of the way, 
and presently the dog was discovered 
lying by the side of the saucer, uncon¬ 
scious, and apparently dead. After a 
time, however, while the stranger was 
mourning over the loss of his pet, the 
dog moved his limbs and gradually 
regained consciousness. Mr. Waldie 
began to think he had made a discovery, 
and, after having administered chloro¬ 
form to a number of cats, with the 
same result, was confirmed in his be¬ 
lief. He went to Edinburg to relate 
his story to some medical men, and at 
the suggestion of a friend, called upon 
Professor James Y. Simpson. After 
that interview Simpson tried a number 
of experiments, and proved beyond all 
question the virtues of chloroform as 
an anaesthetic. Professor Simpson 
published the results of his experi¬ 
ments in 1847, and gave full credit to 
Mr. Waldie for his share in the matter; 
but, as the learned physician had pre¬ 
viously tried ether, protoxide of nitro¬ 
gen, and everything in fact that was 
suspected to have anaesthetic proper¬ 


ties, it is more than probable that he 
would soon have hit upon chloroform. 

It was Dr. Simpson who first applied 
chloroform in child-birth, and for this 
he is justly celebrated. Although 
chloroform was discovered by an Amer¬ 
ican, Guthrie, in 1831, and the editor 
of the Pharmaceutical Journal , of 
Philadelphia, in publishing an account 
of it, even at that early date, anticipa¬ 
ted for it an extensive application in 
medicine, it was not until the news of 
Dr. Simpson’s experiments reached 
this country in the winter of 1847, 
that this valuable compound was intro¬ 
duced as an anaesthetic. The scientific 
properties of chloroform were first in-' 
vestigated by Liebig and Dumas, and 
they gave it its present name from 
its supposed chemical constitution — 
terchloride of formyle, which was 
abbreviated to chloroform.— 


WHAT HAPPENED ON FRIDAY. 


Some people will persist in denomi¬ 
nating Friday as “ unlucky,” notwith¬ 
standing that it is the date of some of 
the most important and most u lucky ” 
occurrences on the record of human 
transactions. Let us see : On Friday, 
Aug. 21, 1492, Columbus sailed on his 
great voyage of discovery. On Friday, 
Oct. 12, 1492, he first discovered land. 
On Friday, Jan. 4, 1493, he sailed on 
his return to Spain, which if he had 
not reached in safety, the happy result 
would never have been known which 
led to the settlement of this vast conti¬ 
nent. On Friday, March 15, 1493, he 
arrived at Palos in safety. On Friday, 
Nov. 22, 1493, he arrived at Hispa¬ 
niola, in his second voyage to America. 
On Friday, June 13, 1494, he, though 
unknown to himself, discovered the 
continent of America. On Friday, 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


41 


March 5, 1496, Henry VIII. of Eng¬ 
land gave to John Cabot his commis¬ 
sion, which led to the discovery of 
North America. This is the first Amer¬ 
ican State paper in England. On 
Friday, Sept. 7, 1565, was founded St. 
Augustine, Florida, the oldest town in 
the United States by more than forty 
years. On Friday, Nov. 10, 1620, the 
May Flower, with the Pilgrims, made 
the harbor of Provincetown ; and on 
the same day they signed that august 
compact, the forerunner of our glorious 
constitution. On Friday, Dec. 22, 
1620, the Pilgrims made their final 
landing at Plymouth Rock. On Fri¬ 
day, Feb. 22, 1732, George Washing¬ 
ton, the Father of American Freedom, 
was born. On Friday, June 16, 1775, 
Bunker Hill was seized and fortified. 
On Friday, Oct. 7, 1777, the surrender 
of Saratoga was made, which had such 
power and influence in inducing France 
to declare for our cause. On Friday, 
Sept. 22, 1780, the treason of Arnold 
was laid bare, which saved us from 
destruction. On Friday, Oct. 19, 1781, 
the surrender at Yorktown, the crown¬ 
ing glory of the American arms, oc¬ 
curred. On Friday, June 7, 1776, the 
motion in Congress was made by John 
Adams, seconded by Richard Henry 
Lee, that the United Colonies were, 
and of right ought to be, free and 
independent. Thus we see that Friday 
is not so bad a day, after all. 


THE WONDERS OF A HEN’S EGG. 

The following interesting observa¬ 
tions that occur from hour to hour 
during the incubation of the hen’s egg 
are from Saturn’s Reflections: 

The hen has scarcely sat on her eggs 
twelve hours before some lineaments 
of the head and body of the chicken 
appear. The heart may be seen to beat 


at the end of the second day ; it has at 
that time somewhat the form of a horse 
shoe, but no blood yet appears. At the 
end of two days two vessels of blood are 
to be distinguished, the pulsation of 
which is visible; one of these is the 
left ventricle, and the other the root of 
the great artery. At the fiftieth hour 
one auricle of the heart appears, re¬ 
sembling a noose folded down upon 
itself. The beating of the heart is first 
observed in the auricle, and afterward 
in the ventricle. At the end of seven¬ 
ty hours the wings are distinguishable ; 
and on the head two bubbles are seen 
for the brain, one for the bill, and two 
for the fore and hind part of the head. 
Toward the end of the fourth day the 
two auricles already visible draw nearer 
the heart than before. The liver ap¬ 
pears toward the fifth day. At the end 
of seven hours more the lungs and 
stomach become visible; and four 
hours afterward the intestines, and 
loins, and the upper jaw. At the one 
hundred and forty-fourth hour two 
ventricles are visible, and two drops of 
blood, instead of the single one which 
was seen before. The seventh day the 
brain begins to have some consistency. 
At the one hundred and ninetieth hour 
of incubation the bill opens, and the 
flesh is seen in the breast. In four 
hours more the breast-bone is seen. In 
six hours after this the ribs appear, 
forming from the back, and the bill is 
visible, as well as the gall-bladder. The 
bill becomes green at the end of two 
hundred and thirty-six hours; and if 
the chicken be taken out of its cover¬ 
ing, it evidently moves itself. At the 
two hundred and sixty-fourtli hour the 
eyes appear. At the two hundred and 
eighty-eighth the ribs are perfect. At 
the three hundred and thirty-first the 
spleen draws near to the stomach and 
the lungs to the chest. At the end of 







42 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


three hundred and fifty-five hours the 
bill frequently opens and shuts; and 
at the end of the eighteenth day the 
first cry of the chicken is heard. It 
afterward gets more strength, and 
grows continually, till at length it is 
enabled to set itself free from confine¬ 
ment. 


HISTORY OF BILLIARDS. 

It has been pretty satisfactorily dem¬ 
onstrated that the game was in vogue 
among the Romans, and particularly 
cultivated by Consul Lucullus, that 
elegant and accomplished Roman epi¬ 
curean, who devoted his colossal fortune 
to the graces and accomplishments of 
refined and polite life. Some have 
referred its introduction to the Emperor 
Caligula. We have never leaned to 
this conclusion, because it is hard to 
believe that so hard-hearted a wretch 
should have had any agency in intro¬ 
ducing so elegant and generous an 
amusement among his countrymen. 
There seems to be little doubt that the 
game of billiards was known to the 
Romans; and we think it would not 
be difficult to prove that every hospit¬ 
able and elegant palace of the Roman 
citizens had a room devoted to this 
glorious and inspiring game. Billiards 
were introduced into France as early 
as the first crusade, which occurred in 
1099. During the reign of Henry III., 
one of the most luxurious of the 
French monarchs gave to this amuse¬ 
ment the epithet of 44 the noble game 
of billiards.” With this royal sanc¬ 
tion, its fascination soon enthralled all 
the elegant circles of Europe, and 
before a quarter of a century had 
passed, billiards became the favorite 
amusement of the nobles and principal 
classes of England, Germany, Italy 
and Spain. The game was introduced 


into this country by the cavaliers of 
Virginia and a few gentlemen of Hol¬ 
land, who became the early possessors 
of Manhattan Island, then called New 
Amsterdam. It was cultivated before 
the Revolution by the most illustrious, 
intelligent and best educated classes. 
General Washington devoted to it as 
many moments of leisure after dinner 
as the serious occupation of his life 
allowed. John Quincy Adams, while 
President, had a billiard table in his 
house, as one of the luxuries which his 
hospitality provided for the after-dinner 
hours of Lafayette. 

There is much to be said on the 
subject of innocent and exhilarating 
amusement. Physicians and surgeons 
of the highest rank among all nations 
have prescribed billiards as the most 
exhilarating and the most beautiful of 
all games. 

Billiards can be played as a relaxa¬ 
tion ; it becomes an intense and excit¬ 
ing game only when the mind throws 
all its energies in that direction, and 
then it is full, often, of the spirit of 
heroism. Sir Astley Cooper attributed 
to the practice of this game, among 
the families of the English aristocracy, 
both male and female, their admitted 
superiority of health, beauty and phys¬ 
ical development, over all other races 
on the earth. 


HOW GOLD LACE IS MADE. 

In an interesting description of the 
method of manufacturing gold lace, an 
exchange pointedly says that gold lace 
is not gold lace; it does not deserve 
this title, for the gold is applied as a 
surface to silver. It is not even silver 
lace, for the silver is applied to a foun¬ 
dation of silk. The silken threads for 
making this material are wound around 
with gold wire so thickly as to conceal 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the silk. The making of this gold 
wire is one of the most singular 
mechanical operations imaginable. In 
the first place, the refiner prepares a 
solid rod of silver about an inch in thick¬ 
ness ; he heats this rod, applies upon the 
surface a coating of gold leaf, burnishes 
this down, applies another coating, 
burnishes this down, and so on, until 
the gold is about one-hundredth part 
the thickness of the silver. Then the 
rod is subjected to a train of processes 
which brings it down to the state of 
fine wire, and it is passed through holes 
in a steel plate, lessened step by step 
in diameter. The gold never deserts 
the silver, but adheres closely to it, and 
shares all its mutations. It is one- 
hundredth part the thickness of the 
silver at the beginning, and it main¬ 
tains the same ratio to the end. As to 
the thinness to which the gold-coated 
rod of silver can be brought, the limit 
depends on the delicacy of human 
skill; but the most remarkable exam¬ 
ple ever known was brought forward 
by Dr. Wollaston. This was an exam¬ 
ple of solid gold wire, entirely free 
from silver. He procured a small rod 
of silver, bored a hole through it from 
end to end, and inserted in this hole 
the smallest gold wire he could pro¬ 
cure. He subjected the silver to the 
usual wire-drawing process, until he 
had brought it to the finest attainable 
state, being, in fact, a silver wire as 
fine as a hair, with a gold wire in its 
center. To isolate this gold wire, he 
subjected it to warm nitrous acid, by 
which the silver was dissolved, leaving 
a gold wire one-thirty thousandth of 
an inch in thickness — perhaps the 
thinnest round wire that the hand of 
man ever produced. But this wire, 
though beyond all comparison finer 
than any employed in manufactures, 
does not approach in thinness the fine 


43 

film of gold on the surface of silver in 
gold lace. It has been calculated that 
the gold on the finest silver wire for 
gold lace is not more than one-third of 
one-millionth of an inch in thickness, 
that is, not above one-tenth the thick¬ 
ness of ordinary gold leaf. 


THE CAMPHOR TREE. 

- i 

The tree from which camphor is ob¬ 
tained belongs to the family of guttifer- 
ous productions. It grows abundantly 
in the forests of Sumatra and Borneo. 
It is one of the strongest and loftiest 
trees of those countries. Its bark is of 
a brownish hue; its leaves resemble 
those of the camphor tree of Japan; 
its leaves and its seeds send forth a pow¬ 
erful smell resembling that of turpen¬ 
tine. The trunk can attain a diameter 
of from six to seven feet. When the 
tree has attained the size of a poplar, 
which is seven or eight years old, it 
yields camphor, but in a small quan¬ 
tity. Before that age it produces only 
a thick oil, which, according to the in¬ 
habitants of these countries, is the first 
state through which the camphor pass¬ 
es. There is no way of exactly recog¬ 
nizing the trees which contain the one 
or the other of those substances. Nev¬ 
ertheless, when old trees are pierced 
camphor is almost invariably found. 
It is usually met with in hollows, very 
close to the heart, exactly as resin is 
met with in other trees. These hollows 
or pockets would seem, by the irregu¬ 
larity of their form, by their extent 
and by their volume, to be rather a di¬ 
seased affection peculiar to the tree 
than a natural property; but this is not 
the case. The manner of procuring 
this resinous substance consists in 
sounding the trees by means of a deep 
incision at their base, and going nearly 
as far in as the heart. If nothing but 












44 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


oil flows out tlie tree is immediately 
abandoned, because, as already stated, 
at the end of seven or eight years it 
yields camphor. As many as twenty 
or thirty trees, sometimes more, are 
thus mutilated before a tree containing 
the matter sought for is found. Every 
tree supposed to contain camphor is 
cut down, then divided into pieces from 
one to two inches in length then trans¬ 
versely cleft into two or four parts, to 
obtain the camphor. Most of the 
camphor which circulates in commerce 
comes to us from Japan or China. It 
is procured from the Laurus Camphora. 
It is obtained by cutting the wood into 
chips which is then submitted to the 
action of heat. 

THE FOURTH OF MARCH. 

How the Presidential Term came to Run 
from that Day. 

It is purely accidental that the 
beginning of our Presidential term of 
four years and the beginning of our 
Congressional term of two years fall 
on the 4th of March. The old Conti¬ 
nental Congress, by a resolution passed 
on the 13th of September, 1788, ap¬ 
pointed the first Wednesday of the 
next January for the choice of Presi¬ 
dential electors, the first Wednesday 
of February for the election of Presi¬ 
dent and Vice President, and the first 
Wednesday of March as the time and 
New York as the place for the organ¬ 
ization of the government under the 
new constitution. The first Wednes¬ 
day of March in 1789 happened to be 
the 4th day of March, and as by the 
constitution the President is chosen 
for four years, and the representatives 
for two years, it follows that, as their 
functions began then on the 4th of 
March, they have ever since termi¬ 
nated at midnight on the 3d of 
March, without reference to the day of 


the week. It made no difference with 
those constitutional conclusions that 
practically Vice President Adams was 
not inaugurated till April 21, nor 
President Washington till April 30, 
1789. The delay was caused by the 
non-appearance at the proper time of 
a quorum in either house of Congress, 
the house having been able first to 
organize March 30 and the Senate 
April 6, and they jointly proceeded 
on this latter day to count and an* 
n ounce the votes for President and 
Vice President. 

By the law of 1845, the time for 
choosing the Presidential electors is 
Tuesday following the first Monday in 
November every fourth year; the 
electors must cast their ballots on the 
first Wednesday in December, their 
votes must all be in by the first 
Wednesday in January ; they must be 
counted by the two houses on the first 
Wednesday in February; and the in¬ 
auguration takes place, rather consti¬ 
tutionally than legally, on the 4th of 
March. 


PIN MONEY. 


In 1614, the London pin-makers, 
desiring to obtain a charter of incorpo¬ 
ration, promised Sir Ralph Win wood 
four thousand pounds, or a moiety of 
the profits on the commerce in pins, if 
he would use his influence in their 
behalf; and two j^ears later, they got 
their charter confirmed, securing the 
sole pre-emption of foreign pins, which 
were forbidden to be landed in any port 
but London. At this time they were 
associated with the wire-makers and 
girdlers (makers of girdles or belts), 
but in 1631 were at their own desire 
separated from them. In 1635, upon 
the renewal of their privileges by 
Charles I., the pinners covenanted to 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


45 


pay his majesty five hundred pounds a 
year forever; which Charles disposed 
of by giving it as a pension to his 
queen. Charles II. confirmed this 
charter upon regaining the throne, 
and subsequently entered into a curious 
contract with the pinners, by which 
he bound himself to raise twenty 
thousand pounds to provide a stock of 
wire, and to take all the pins they 
made at prices fixed by the Lord Treas¬ 
urer ; the pinners, on their part, un¬ 
dertaking to deliver seventy thousand 
pounds weight of ordnance half-yearly 
to the Master of the Ordnance (receiv¬ 
ing ten thousand pounds at the ex¬ 
piration of the contract), and to pay 
five hundred a year to Sir Edward But¬ 
ter, and a fifth of that amount to Sir 
William Killigrew — that couple of 
gentlemen making a nice thing out of 
what Killigrew called “the pin busi¬ 
ness.” 

From the .custom of husbands, in 
the days when pins were precious 
things, allowing their wives so much 
money, for their purchase, sprang the 
term “pin money,” afterwards applied 
to the income settled upon a woman 
on her marriage for her own proper 
use. Addison did not approve of pin 
money. He says : — 

“ In proportion as a woman is more 
or less beautiful, and her husband ad¬ 
vanced in years, she stands in need of 
a greater or less number of pins, and 
upon a treaty of marriage, rises or falls 
in her demands.” 


THE POSTAL CARD. 


The origin of the present postal 
card illustrates the truth of the adage 
how great events may come from little 
things. Mr. Howland Hill, the great 
English postal reformer, is the pioneer 
to wbom the world is indebted for this 


valuable institution. It was suggested 
to Mr. Hill by the following incident: 
One day while standing near a humble 
door he saw a poor woman look long 
and earnestly at a letter and then de¬ 
cline it. Curious to know the cause, he 
waited till the postman had gone, and 
then received the information that the 
letter was all on the outside ; that she 
and her husband had agreed upon a 
system of signs, such as variations in 
the lines and characters, by which she 
could learn that he was well, or ill, or 
coming home soon, or wished her to 
come to him, and so on. Struck with 
the hardships which the want of pro¬ 
per postage must inflict on the poor, 
the great man conceived the idea of the 
penny postage; and so the world is 
indebted, like the Chicago fire, to a 
poor woman— in the one case for a 
vast calamity, in the other for a great 
blessing. 


HISTORY OF THE PIANO-FORTE. 

A useful and interesting History of 
the Piano-Forte has recently appeared 
in London, and, as a concise account 
of what is the musical instrument of 
the age, supplies a want that has long 
been felt. From it we learn that the 
first instrument with a clavier, or 
finger key-board, was the organ, which, 
in a very crude guise, is recorded as 
early as 757 ; and about the year 1300 
some ingenious Italian applied the 
same means of action to a kind of 
harp or lyre, with hard leather plectra 
for snapping the strings. Simulta¬ 
neously with this appeared the clavi¬ 
chord, in which vibration was induced 
by a wedge of brass striking the string. 
Forkel, a celebrated writer on ancient 
music and musical instruments, says 
that the great Sebastian Bach de¬ 
lighted in this instrument, as he con- 












46 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


siderecl it the best for study and for 
the expression of his thoughts. In 
England the clavichord was superseded 
by the virginal and spinet — instru¬ 
ments identical with it in detail, dif¬ 
fering only in form. The virginal 
was popular in court circles during 
the Tudor reigns — Henry VIII., his 
daughters Mary and Elizabeth, and 
Mary Queen of Scots, being proficient 
performers on it. To the virginal and 
spinet, with but one string to each 
note, succeeded the harpsichord, with 
two, and sometimes three or four wires 
to a note, actuating stops, and other 
complicated apparatus. The piano¬ 
forte proper, with its elastic percussion 
and damper action, such as we now 
have it in an important form, first saw 
the light in Italy. According to some, 
Father Wood, an English monk, at 
Rome, constructed the first in 1711; 
but priority of invention is claimed 
by both French and Germans. The 
following extract is taken from an old 
play-bill, still in existence, and is in¬ 
teresting as being the first notice we 
have of a public performance on the 
piano-forte : 

FOR THE BENEFIT OF MISS BRICKLER, 

16th of May, 1767. 

* * At the end of the first act, 

Miss Brickler will sing a favorite song 
from “Judith,” accompanied by Mr. 
Dibdin on a new instrument , called the 
piano-forte. 

Its invention, like many others, is 
disputed; and England, France, Italy, 
and Germany, claim to have a share in 
the honor. Pianos were certainly made 
for the first time in the four countries 
within a very few years of each other ; 
but in Germay alone did they suc¬ 
ceed. Silbermann improved upon the 
invention of Schroeter, and constructed 
pianos which met with Bach’s appro¬ 
bation. From this dates the success of 


the piano in Germany. Frederick tne 
Great had no less then forty of Silber- 
mann’s pianos in his palace at Berlin ; 
and when Bach visited him he insisted 
upon the old man trying every one. 
Stein of Augsburg was also a cele¬ 
brated maker; and Mozart, in one of 
his letters, describes the care taken by 
Stein in seasoning the wood, which 
was exposed to all sorts of weather, 
and afterwards had all the cracks filled 
up with slits of wood glued into them. 
In England, the piano made no sensi¬ 
ble progress until 1760, when twelve 
German workmen — afterwards called 
the “twelve apostles” — arrived in 
search of employment. Dibdin, at a 
concert in 1767, played on the first 
piano publicly exhibited, and after that 
the instrument became very popular, 
and harpsichords more and more in 
disrepute. Sebastin Erard made a 
great improvement in the touch ; and 
Broadwood, who came to London from 
Scotland in 1751, introduced what he 
called his “grand action,” which im¬ 
proved many defects. From that day 
until the present the piano has been 
improving. 


POWER OF SEA BREAKERS. 

From experiments which were made 
some time since, at the Bell Rock and 
Skerryvore lighthouses, on the coasts 
of Scotland, it was found that while 
the force of the breakers on the side of 
the German Ocean may be taken at 
about a ton and a half upon every 
square foot of surface exposed to them, 
the Atlantic breakers fall with double 
that weight, or three tons to the square 
foot; and thus a surface of only two 
square yards sustains a blow from a 
heavy Atlantic breaker equal to about 
54 tons. In November, 1824, a heavy 
gale blew, and blocks of limestone and 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


47 


granite, from two to five tons in 
weight, were washed about like peb¬ 
bles, at the Plymouth breakwater. 
About 200 tons of such blocks were 
borne a distance of 300 feet, and up 
the inclined plane of the breakwater, 
carried over it, and scattered in various 
directions. A block of limestone, sev¬ 
en tuns in weight, was in one place 
washed a distance of 150 feet. Blocks 
of three tons weight were torn away 
by a single blow of a breaker, and 
hurled over into a harbor ; and one of 
nearly two tons, strongly trenailed 
down upon a jetty, was torn away and 
tossed upwards by an overpowering 
breaker. 


THE ARTS OF A HUNDRED YEARS 

AGO. 

One hundred years ago, what a man 
discovered in the arts, he concealed. 
Workmen were put upon oath, in the 
name of God, never to reveal the pro¬ 
cess used by their employers. Doors 
were kept closed, artisans going out 
were searched, visitors were rigorously 
excluded from admission, and false 
operations blinded the workmen them¬ 
selves. The mysteries of every craft 
were hedged in by thickset fences of 
empirical pretensions and judicial af¬ 
firmation. The royal manufactories of 
porcelain, for example, were long car¬ 
ried on in Europe with a spirit of jeal¬ 
ous exclusiveness. His Majesty of 
Saxony was especially circumspect. 
Not content with the oath of secrecy 
imposed upon his work-people, he 
would not abate his kingly suspicion 
in favor of a brother monarch. Nei¬ 
ther king nor king’s delegate might 
enter the tabooed walls of Meissen. 
What is erroneously called the Dresden 
porcelain — that exquisite pottery of 
which the world has never seen the 


like — was produced for two hundred 
years by a process so secret that neither 
the bribery of princes nor the garrulity 
of the operatives ever revealed it. 

Other discoveries have been less suc¬ 
cessfully guarded, fortunately for the 
world. The manufacture of tinware 
in England originated in a stolen 
secret. Few readers need to be in¬ 
formed that tinware is simply thin iron 
plated with tin by being dipped into 
the molten metal. In theory it is an 
easy matter to clean the surface of iron, 
dip it into a bath of the boiling tin, 
and remove it, enveloped with the 
silvery metal, to a place for cooling. 
In practice, however, the process is one 
of the most difficult in the arts. It 
was discovered in Holland, and guarded 
from publicity with the utmost vigil¬ 
ance for nearly half a century. Eng¬ 
land tried in vain to discover the secret, 
until James Sherman, a Cornish miner, 
crossed the Channel, insinuated himself 
master of the secret, and brought it 
home. The secret of manufacturing 
cast-steel was also stealthily obtained, 
and it is now within the reach of all 
artisans. 

Another stolen secret is the method 
of making citric acid. The inventor 
of the process — who was a resident of 
London, England — for a long time 
enjoyed the monopoly of his invention. 
More favorably circumstanced than 
other inventors, his was a process that 
required no assistance. He employed 
no workmen. Experts came to sample 
and assort and bottle his products. 
They never entered his laboratory. 
The mystic operations by which he 
grew rich were confined to himself. 
One day, having locked the doors and 
blinded the windows, sure as usual of 
the safety of his secret, the chemist 
went home to dinner. A chimney¬ 
sweep, or a boy distinguished as such. 









48 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


wide awake in chemistry, was on the 
watch. Following the secret-keeper 
so far on his way toward Charing Cross 
as to be sure he would not return that 
day, the sooty philosopher hied rapidly 
back to Temple Bar, ascended the low 
building, dropped down the flue, saw 
all he wanted, and returned, carrying 
with him the mystery of making citric 
acid. The monopoly of the inventor 
was gone, a few months after, and the 
price of the article was reduced four- 
fifths. The poor man was heart¬ 
broken, and died shortly afterward, 
ignorant of the trick b} T which he had 
been victimized. He was to be pitied 
as an individual sufferer ; but the wheel 
of progress is bound to crush all obsta¬ 
cles which threaten to impede its 
course, sacrificing the man to the needs 
of the multitude. Fortunately, inven¬ 
tors of the present day can work 
openly, and enrich themselves while 
they benefit others. 


VIOLIN STRINGS. 

The manufacture of strings for mu¬ 
sical instruments has been carried on 
from time immemorial in some of the 
small villages in the Abruzzi, and at 
the present time the Neopolitan prov¬ 
inces maintain their superiority in the 
production of this article. They re¬ 
quire the greatest care and dexterity 
on the part of the workman. 

The treble strings are particularly 
difficult to make, and are made at 
Naples, probably because the Neopoli¬ 
tan sheep, from their small size and 
leanness, afford the best raw material. 
They are made from the small intes¬ 
tines, which must be well scraped. 
The intestines are then steeped in 
alkaline lyes, clarified with a little 
alum for four or five days, until the 
guts are well bleached and swollen. 


They are next drawn through an open 
brass thimble, and pressed against it 
with the nail, in order to smooth and 
equal their surface ; after which they 
are washed, spun or twisted, and sul¬ 
phured during two hours. They are 
finally polished by friction, and dried. 
Sometimes they are sulphured twice 
or thrice before being dried, and are 
polished between horse-hair cords. 

The strings manufactured in Italy 
are noted for their strength, transpar¬ 
ency, brilliancy and clearness of tone. 
This manufacture was introduced into 
France by a Neopolitan nobleman, in 
1767, who established a manufactory 
at Lyons. This industry is carried 
on in various other towns in Italy; 
namely, Guibbio, Foligno, Bologna, 
Venice, Vicenza, Verona and Bassano. 

THE FORTUNES OF OUR PRESIDENTS. 

Washington left an estate worth 
nearly $300,000. John Adams left a 
moderate fortune at his death. Jeffer¬ 
son would have died poor if Congress 
had not purchased his library at a price 
far above its value — $20,000. Madi¬ 
son, by the purchase of his manuscript 
papers by Congress for $30,000, in¬ 
creased the fortune of his widow. 
James Monroe died so poor that he was 
buried at the expense of his relatives. 
John Quincy Adams left about $50,000. 
He was methodical and economical. 
Andrew Jackson left a valuable estate 
known as the Hermitage. Martin Van 
Buren died rich; his estate was worth 
$300,000. James K. Polk left about 
$150,000. John Tyler was a bankrupt 
when he became President. He mar¬ 
ried a rich wife and died wealthy. 
Zachary Taylor left about $150,000. 
Millard Fillmore died a wealthy man 
Franklin Pierce saved about $50,000. 
James Buchanan left an estate valued 
at $200,000. Abraham Lincoln left 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


49 


about $75,000. Andrew Johnson was 
worth about $50,000. Grant, through 
the generous gifts of friends before he 
became President and the large sale of 
his Memoirs, which he finished just 
previous to his death, added a large 
amount to his estate. Garfield left 
about $<5,000. Arthur was a very 
careful business man, and his estate 
was supposed to be worth $75,000. 


TYPEWRITER. 

This almost indispensable article is 
not comparatively new, as many would 
naturally suppose. A patent was issued 
to Thurber, No. 3228, August 26, 1843, 
also to same party, No. 4271, November 
18, 1845 ; one to Fairbank, No. 7652, 
September 17, 1850. An English pat¬ 
ent was granted as early as 1714, No. 
395, also one, No. 9204, in 1841 and 
1843. 


DEATH OF ENGLISH KINGS. 

William the Conqueror died from 
enormous fat, from drink, and from the 
violence of his passions. 

William Rufus died the death of the 
poor stags which he hunted. 

Henry I. died of gluttony. 

Henry II. died of a broken heart, 
occasioned by the bad conduct of his 
children. 

Richard Coeur de Lion, like the ani¬ 
mal from which his heart was named, 
died by an arrow from an archer. 

John died, nobody knows how; but 
it is said from chagrin, which we sup¬ 
pose is another term for a dose of hel¬ 
lebore. 

Henry III. is said to have died a 
14 natural death.” 

Edward I. is likewise said to have 
died a 44 natural sickness,”— a sickness 


which would puzzle all the College of 
Physicians to denominate. 

Edward II. was most barbarously 
and indecently murdered by ruffians 
employed by his own mother and her 
paramour. 

Edward III. died of dotage, and 
Richard II. of starvation — the very 
reverse of George IY. 

Henry IV. is said to have died of 
44 fits caused by uneasiness ; ” and un¬ 
easiness in palaces in those times was 
a very common complaint. 

Henry Y. is said to have died of 44 a 
painful affliction, prematurely.” This is 
a courtly term for getting rid of a king. 

Henry YI. died in prison, by means 
known then only to his jailor, and now 
known only to Heaven. 

Edward Y. was strangled in the 
tower by his uncle, Richard III. 

Richard III. was killed in battle. 

Henry YII. wasted away as a misei 
ought to. 

Henry YIII. died of carbuncles, fat 
and fury. 

Edward YI. died of a decline. 

Queen Mary is said to have died of a 
broken heart. 

Old Queen Bess is said to have died 
of melancholy, from having sacrificed 
Essex to his enemies. 

James I. died of drinking and the 
effects of vice. 

Charles I. died on the scaffold. 

Charles II. died suddenly — it is said 
of apoplexy. 

William III. died from consumptive 
habits of body, and from the stum¬ 
bling of his horse. 

Queen Anne died from dropsy. 

George I. died of drunkenness, which 
his physicians' politely called an apo¬ 
plectic fit. 

George II. died of a rupture of the 
heart, which the periodicals of that day 
termed a visitation of God. 










50 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


George III. died as he had lived — a 
madman. Throughout life he was at 
least a consistent monarch. 

George IV, died of gluttony and 
drunkenness. 

William IV. died amidst the sympa¬ 
thies of his subjects. 


BORAX. 


It may be interesting to some to 
know that a weak solution of borax 
water snuffed up the nostrils, causing 
it to pass through to the nasal passage 
to the throat, then ejecting it from the 
mouth, will greatly relieve catarrh, 
and in cases not too obstinate or long 
standing will, if persevered in, effect a 
permanent cure. It is also of great 
value in cases of inflamed or weak 
eyes. Make a solution (not too strong) 
and bathe the eye by opening and 
shutting it two or three times in the 
water. This can be done by means of 
an eye cup, or equally well by holding a 
handful of water to the eye. Another 
difficulty with which many persons are 
afflicted is an irritation or inflam¬ 
mation of the membrane lining of the 
cavities of the nose, which becomes 
aggravated by the slightest cold, often 
causing great pain. This can be great¬ 
ly relieved, if not entirely cured, by 
snuffing borax water up the nostrils 
two or three times a day. The most 
difficult cases of sore throat may be 
cured by using it simply as a gargle. 
As a wash for the head, it not only 
leaves the scalp very white and clean, 
but renders the hair soft and glossy. 
It has also been found by many to be 
of invaluable service in case of nerv¬ 
ous headache. If applied in the same 
manner as in washing the hair the 
result is wonderful. It may be used 
quite strong, after which rinse the 


hair carefully with clear water ; let the 
person thus suffering remain in a 
quiet, well-ventilated room, until the 
hair is nearly or quite dry, and, if pos¬ 
sible, indulge in a short sleep, and 
there will hardly remain a trace of the 
headache. If clergymen, teachers and 
others who have an undue amount of 
brain-work for the kind and quality of 
physical exercise usually taken, would 
shampoo the head in this manner 
about once a week, and then under¬ 
take no more brain work until the 
following morning, the}^ would be sur¬ 
prised to find how clear the faculties 
had become, and there is reason to 
hope there would be much less prema¬ 
ture decay of the mental faculties. 
As a toilet requisite it is quite indis¬ 
pensable. If used to rinse the mouth 
each time after cleaning the teeth, it 
will prevent the gums from becoming 
diseased or unclean. In short, in all 
cases of allaying inflammation there is 
probably nothing better in materia 
medica. The average strength of the 
solution should be a small teaspoonful 
to a toilet glass of water. 


A DOMESTIC RECIPE. 

A father, who had passed innumera¬ 
ble sleepless nights, has immortalized 
himself by discovering a method of 
keeping babies quiet. The modus op- 
erandi is as follows: as soon as the 
squaller awakes, set it up, propped by 
a pillow, if it cannot sit alone, and 
smear its fingers with thick molasses ; 
then put half a dozen feathers into its 
hands, and it will sit and pick the 
feathers from one hand to the other 
until it drops asleep. As soon as it 
wakes again, more molasses and more 
feathers; and in place of the nerve 
astounding yells, there will be silence 
and enjoyment unspeakable. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


51 


INTENTION OF THE SPIRIT LEVEL. 


He who first filled a glass bottle 
with a liquid, leaving a small quantity 
of air therein to form a bubble, then 
corked the bottle and laid it flat on 
one side, with the bubble floating 
against the upper part, was the uncon¬ 
scious inventor of the spirit level, 
which is a very simple instrument in 
appearance, but of the utmost value, 
when properly made, to the astrono¬ 
mer, the engineer and the builder ; for 
when the bottle is placed horizontally, 
the bubble always mounts to and rests 
at its most elevated point; and the 
tangent to that point, when the mid¬ 
dle or apex point of the bubble coin¬ 
cides therewith, is a horizontal line; 
that is, a line at right angles, or per¬ 
pendicular to the direction of gravity 
or the plumb line passing through that 
point. 

This was first perceived and applied, 
so far as is known, in France in 1666, 
by Melchisedec Thevenot, who was a 
great amateur of science and a writer 
of books of voyages and travels. In 
this respect be enriched the literature 
of France as much as Hakluyt enriched 
that of England half a century earlier. 
It was at Thevenot’s house that the 
learned men who founded the Academy 
of Sciences of Paris used to assemble; 
and it was at one of their meetings 
that he propounded the spirit level. 

A description of the instrument, 
accompanied with figures, was first 
published in the Journal des Savants, 
Paris, November 15, 1666, under this 
title: “ Machine nouvelle pour la con¬ 
duce des eaux, pour les bailments, pour 
la navigation, et pour la plupart des 
autres arts." The instrument is there 
called an air level; and is described as 
a glass tube, hermetically sealed at 
both ends, containing spirits of wine, 


which do not freeze, and a small quan¬ 
tity of air forming a bubble. It is 
stated that the instrument is capable 
of giving, with much exactness, the 
direction of the horizon, the perpendic¬ 
ular to the horizon, and vertical angles ; 
and that it is easier to make, more con¬ 
venient to use, and indicates a level 
line more readily and accurately than 
any other instrument. 

ECONOMY OF THE ARTS. 

The horse-shoe nails dropped in the 
streets, carefully collected, reappear in 
form of swords and guns. The clip¬ 
pings of tinkers 1 shops mixed with the 
parings of horses hoofs, or cast-off 
woolen garments, appear afterwards, in 
the forms of dyes of the brightest 
blue, in the dress of courtly dames. 
The bones of dead animals yield the 
chief constituents of lucifer matches 
— phosphorus. The dregs of port 
wine, carefully rejected by the port 
wine drinker in decanting his favorite 
beverage, are taken by him in the form 
of seidlitz powders. The washings of 
coal gas re-appear carefully preserved 
in the lady’s smelling-bottle as an am- 
moniacal salt. 

CHEAP ICE PITCHER. 

Place between two sheets of paper 
(newspaper will answer, thick brown 
is better) a layer of cotton batting 
about half an inch in thickness, fasten 
the ends of paper and batting to¬ 
gether, forming a circle, then sew or 
paste a crown over one end, making a 
box the shape of a stove-pipe hat 
minus the rim. Place this over an 
ordinary pitcher filled with ice-water, 
making it deep enough to rest on the 
table, so as to exclude the air, and the 
reader will be astonished at the length 
of time his ice will keep and the water 
remain cold after the ice is melted. 












52 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


FOOLSCAP. 

The origin of “foolscap” paper is 
not generally known. Charles I. of 
England granted numerous monopolies 
for the support of the government. 
Among others was the manufacture of 
paper. The watermark, of the finest 
sort, was the royal arms of England. 
The consumption of this article was 
great at this time, and large fortunes 
were made by those who had purchased 
the right to vend it. This, among 
other monopolies, was set aside by the 
Parliament that brought Charles I. to 
the scaffold, and as one way of show¬ 
ing their contempt for the King, they 
ordered the royal arms to be taken 
from the paper, and a fool with his cap 
and bells to be substituted. It is now 
over two hundred years since the fool’s 
cap and bells were taken from the 
paper ; but still the paper of the size 
which the Rump Parliament ordered 
for their journals bears the name and 
water-mark as an indignity to Charles I. 


EXPLANATION OF TERM “CARAT” 

The word carat comes from the 
Abyssinian name for bean. It corres¬ 
ponds in weight with a certain species 
of East Indian bean, and was origin¬ 
ally only used as a weight, in the same 
manner as our word grain comes from 
a grain of wheat, and has also its aver¬ 
age weight. The exact relation of the 
carat to the grain, Troy weight, is, in 
round numbers, as 4608 to 1185, or, 
in other words, 1185 carats are equal to 
4608 grains Troy; by division of the 
last number by the first, we find for 
the weight of a carat 3.88 grains very 
nearly. This is the weight by which 
jewellers sell diamonds; but when 
they buy them, however, they count 
by round numbers of grains, and use 


four grains for a carat. The carat is 
now only used for the weight of 
precious stones and pearls, because the 
grain is too small. In ancient times, 
it was used as the unit of weight for 
gold; but is now, by the greater 
abundance of that precious metal, su¬ 
perseded by the ounce. In regard to 
the alloy of gold, it has been accepted 
to take 24 carats of gold, or 93 grains 
very near, as the standard of pure 
gold; and to call gold in which 20 
carats in 24 carats are pure gold, gold 
of 20 carats ; when f is pure, or 18 
carats in 24 carats, it is called 18 car¬ 
ats. So, in regard to the alloy of gold, 
the word carat has become similar to 
the expression of a percentage, with 
the difference that 24 is substituted for 
100. So 18 carats is identical to 75 
per cent, fine, 12 carats to 50 per cent, 
fine, etc. That this manner of esti¬ 
mating the value is kept up, is simply 
due to the custom of following the 
duodecimal system in making alloys ; 
when using the decimal weights and 
divisions, we are naturally driven to 
expressions like 80 and 90 per cent, 
fine, as is done in almost all mints in 
the civilized world. 


BOXWOOD. 

Boxwood, as is well known, grows 
in different parts of the world. The 
bulk, however, of that which is used 
in this country is imported from Tur¬ 
key. The growth of the tree is slow. 
If it be twelve inches in diameter, its 
age is to be numbered by centuries for 
it is above 500 years old. Those trees 
which attain a diameter of eighteen 
inches are about 1,000 years old. Block 
makers prefer trees eight to ten inches 
in diameter. The wood is sold by the 
ton, is very costly, and is of such va¬ 
rious qualities that not more than an 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


53 


eighth or a tenth part of a ton is suit¬ 
able for the finest engravings. 

The best quality of wood is of a 
bright canary color, the texture fine 
and close, and the surface free from 
dark markings; great care is required 
in preparing the blocks. After the 
wood in the blocks has been sawn up 
into sections of a proper thickness, 
and becomes thoroughly seasoned, it is 
ready to be cut into blocks, and here 
one may see what an amount of waste 
wood there is. Checks and other im¬ 
perfections require close cutting of the 
sound wood, and as these pieces are 
necessarily small, several must be 
joined together to form a large block. 

Blocks, the size of our fashion plates, 
are composed of from four to six differ¬ 
ent pieces, fitted, doweled, and glued 
together with such extreme nicety as 
to present the appearance of a solid 
piece. Large blocks are generally 
joined together with screws, so as to 
admit of being taken apart for engrav¬ 
ing, and re-united when ready for the 
printer. 

THE COW POX. 

How the Yaccine Matter is Manufactured. 

The room in which the heifers are 
kept is light, warm, and airy — a per¬ 
fectly finished room, indeed, with plas¬ 
tered walls and ceiling, and the stalls 
are built with as great regard to com¬ 
fort and neatness as those of a gentle¬ 
man’s stable. Dry sawdust is furnished 
for bedding, and the best hay, with 
meal mashes, for food. Under the 
large south window stands a peculiar 
“operating table,” with a top which 
folds down, two projecting arms then 
coming to the floor, as if forming extra 
legs. The heifer selected is led out, 
placed alongside this table, and its fore 
feet secured by fastenings already at¬ 


tached to one arm, and its hind legs in 
like manner to the other. A stout 
belt encircles its body and the flat top 
of the table, and a halter and neck 
strap holds its head in place at one 
corner. Then the whole top is tilted 
up to place and secured, aud the bovine 
martyr to science is recumbent on one 
side upon the top of the table. A por¬ 
tion of its abdomen, about the size of 
two full-grown hands, is then shaved 
clean, and the vaccine virus from an¬ 
other heifer, at the seventh day of the 
disease, is inserted in little punctures 
arranged in rows an inch apart each 
way. The table-top is again canted 
down, and the little beast released and 
installed till six or seven days after, 
when its vesicles are ripe for the supply 
of lymph to another heifer and the 
human race in general. It is then 
replaced on the table, and the operator, 
taking a box of small ivory points pre¬ 
pared for that purpose, a rack for the 
same to dry on, and a pair of peculiar¬ 
shaped, slim pliers, seats himself at the 
side of the table. With the pliers he 
gently squeezes each pustule in turn, 
and as the lymph oozes forth carefully 
collects it on the ivory points. From 
a good yielding animal several hundred 
points can be charged. This done, the 
heifer returns to her stall and remains 
a few days longer, when the “ crusts,” 
having matured, are carefull} r taken 
off and mounted in gutta perclia, for 
the use of those physicians who prefer 
this form of administration. The heifer 
then, having fulfilled her mission, re¬ 
turns to private life. The operation 
is conducted with such care to avoid 
unnecessary suffering, or even incon¬ 
venience to the animal, that it fre¬ 
quently goes to sleep on the table, and 
does not evince any pain. Two agents 
for the prevention of cruelty to ani¬ 
mals recently visited the place, and 









54 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


after seeing the whole process, declared 
themselves satisfied that no cruelty 
was inflicted. The ivory points, after 
being charged and becoming dry, are 
carefully placed, ten in a bunch, and 
wound in cotton fiber. Then white 
paper is wrapped around them, and 
lastly rubber tissue, which is tied at 
the end, producing a water-tight and 
air-tight package. These, then, are 
packed in any desired quantity, and 
shipped to fill orders. 


THE ORIGIN OF “ GROG.” 

Until the time of Admiral Vernon 
the British sailors had their allowance 
of brandy or rum served out to them 
unmixed with water. This plan was 
found to be attended with inconveni¬ 
ences on some occasions, and the admi¬ 
ral therefore ordered that in the fleet 
he commanded, the spirit should be 
mixed with water before it was given 
to the men. This innovation at first 
gave great offense to the sailors, and 
rendered the commander very unpopu¬ 
lar. The admiral at that time wore a 
grogham coat, and was nicknamed 
“Old Grog.” This name was after¬ 
ward given to the mixed liquor he 
compelled them to take, and it has 
hence universally obtained the name 
of grog. 


EXTINCT FAMILIES. 

Robert Stephenson leaves no family 
behind him. His wife died many 
years ago, and he remained a widower, 
so that the direct line from George 
Stephenson, the eminent English en¬ 
gineer, has died out. James Watt, 
the noted British inventor, left no 
descendants. It appears that the men 
noted for mechanical genius, like 
many of those famous in literature, 


science and government, in Great 
Britain, leave no children to perpet¬ 
uate their names. Shakespeare, Mil- 
ton, Bacon, Newton, Harvey, Pope, 
Mansfield, Pitt, Fox, Gray, Cowper, 
Collins, Thomson, Goldsmith, Con¬ 
greve, Hume, Bishop, Butler, Locke, 
Hobbs, Adams, Smith, Bentham, Davy, 
Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Thomas 
Lawrence, and others well known to 
fame in British annals, have no lineal 
representatives now living. 


HOW GLASS PAPER WEIGHTS ARE 

MADE. 

Every one knows those paper weights 
of solid, colorless glass, in a hemispher¬ 
ical shape, in the center of which are 
boquets, portraits, and even watches 
and barometers, etc., but few persons 
know how or by what means these 
things are incarcerated in the center 
of the glass. There is a great distinc¬ 
tion to be made, not merely between 
the objects, but also between the ma¬ 
terials of which they are composed. 
As those representing flowers and bo¬ 
quets in glass—those from which the 
name is derived — are the most ancient 
and the best known, we will begin 
with them. 

The first thing to be done is to 
sort and arrange a certain quantity of 
small glass tubes of different colors in 
the cavities of a thick molten disk, dis¬ 
posing them according to the object 
to be represented. This done, the 
tubes are inclosed between two layers 
of glass. To do this they begin by 
placing on one side of the disk which 
contains the tubes, a layer of crystal, 
to which the tubes soon become at- 
ached. When this is done the disk is 
removed and a second layer of crystal 
is placed on the opposite side. The 
object being placed in the center be- 












THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


tween these two layers of glass thus 
soldered together, it becomes neces¬ 
sary to give the ball its hemispherical 
form, which is done when the crystal 
is again heated, by means of a concave 
spatula of moistened wood. It then 
only remains to anneal and to polish 
it on the wheels. 

That a glass ornament, being cover¬ 
ed with a layer of hot glass, should re¬ 
ceive no injury of color, may be easily 
understood from its extremelv refrac¬ 
tory nature; but it is not the same 
with objects in metal, such as watches, 
barometers, etc., which a far less degree 
of heat would oxidize or even entirely 
destroy. The mode of manufacture, 
therefore, of these latter objects is 
quite different from that of the first. 
It is easy to prove this. If we look at 
a paper weight, provided the interior 
be of glass, the upper and under part 
of the recipient will also be of glass. 
If we now examine a paper weight 
containing a watch or barometer, un¬ 
der the lower part of the ball will be 
found a piece of green cloth, the use 
of which is to keep in place the objects 
which, instead of only forming one 
body with the covering of glass which 
surrounds them, are only placed in a 
cavity made beforehand in the center 
of the half spherical ball. In a word, 
to take out the glass ornaments, it 
would be necessary to break the paper 
weight, whilst to take out the others it 
would suffice to take off the cloth. As 
for the paper weights in which are 
placed portraits, usually of a yellowish 
color, these profiles are made of refrac¬ 
tory earth, and many thus bear well a 
heat which only softens glass. Manu¬ 
factured successively at Venice under 
the name of milleflori, and then in 
Bohemia, these paper weights have 
been carried to perfection only by 
French artists. The sole difficulty in 


55 

their manufacture is in avoiding inter¬ 
nal air bubbles, which would the more 
deform the objects, as any defect would 
be much increased by the thickness of 
the glass. 

WHAT IS MEANT BY A HORSE POWER 1 

The power of prime movers is meas¬ 
ured by horse power Watt found 
that the strongest London draft horses 
were capable of doing work equivalent 
to raising 33,000 pounds one foot high 
per minute, and he took this as the 
unit of power for the steam engine. 
The horse is not usually capable of 
doing so great a quantity of work. 
Rankine gave 26,000 foot pounds as 
the figure for a mean of several exper¬ 
iments, and it is probable that 25,000 
foot is a fair minute’s work for a good 
animal. It would require five or six 
men to do the work of a strong horse. 
Watt’s estimate has become, by gen¬ 
eral consent among engineers, the 
standard of power measurement for all 
purposes. 

“ROSIN THE BOW.” 

Col. W. H. Sparks, a resident of New 
Orleans, claims to be the original author 
of this famous song. In a letter from 
him on the subject, he says that in 
1826 he located in Mississippi, and 
began practicing law. After speaking 
of his neighbors, he says : 

“ Among these were two equally 
remarkable, but very unlike. One was 
a school-master, who was quite old, 
and had been teaching in that neigh¬ 
borhood over forty years. His name 
was James Rossum. He was peculiar 
in his habits. On Monday morning, 
neatly dressed and cleanly shaven, he 
went to his duties in the old school- 
house where two-thirds of his life had 
been spent, and assiduously devoted 














50 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


himself to the duties of his vocation 
until Friday evening. On the morn¬ 
ing of Saturday he arrayed himself in 
his best and devoted the day in visiting 
the ladies of the neighborhood. He 
was a welcome guest at every house 
This habit had continued so long that 
he had acquired the sobriquet of 1 Ros- 
sum, the Beau. 1 The other’s name 
was Cox, who was a rollicking, good 
fellow, and the best vocalist I ever 
knew. He was in song what Prentiss 
was in oratory, and they were boon 
companions ; both died young. 

u Cox was frequently at my office, 
and upon one occasion when he was 
there Rossum walked by the door, and 
his age was apparent in his walk. Cox 
looked at him, and, after a pause, 
turned to me and remarked in quite a 
feeling tone, which he could assume at 
pleasure, and its eloquence was inde¬ 
scribable : ' Poor old Rossum ! some of 
these sunny mornings he will be found 
dead, when he shall have a noble 
funeral, and all the ladies will honor it 
by being present, T know. 1 

“ Soon after he left the office, and 
being in the humor, I seized the ideas 
and wrote the following doggerel lines. 
Soon after Cox returned, and I handed 
them to him. He got up, walked and 
hummed different airs, until he fell 
upon the old Methodist hymn tune, in 
which they have ever since been sung. 

“ I have always considered Cox more 
entitled to the authorship of the song 
than myself. 

“ Hundreds of lines have been writ¬ 
ten to the air, by as many persons, and 
almost as many have claimed the 
authorship of the lines ; but this is of 
no moment. I claim no merit for my 
lines, but everything for Cox singing 
them. I have seen him draw tears 
from the eyes of old and young, with 
the feeling he threw into the song : 


“Now, soon on some soft, sunny morning, 

The first thing my neighbors shall know, 

Their ears shall be met with the warning— 
Come bury old Rossum, the beau. 

“ My friends then so neatly shall dress me 
In linen as white as the snow— 

And in my new coffin shall press me, 

And whisper : Poor Rossum, the beau. 

“And when I’m to be buried, I reckon, 

The ladies will all like to go ; 

Let them form at the foot of my coffin, 

And follow old Rossum, the beau. 

“ Then take you a dozen good fellows, 

And let them all staggering go; 

And dig a deep hole in the meadow, 

And in it toss Rossum, the beau. 

“ Then shape out a couple of dornicks, 

Place one at the head and the toe; » 

And, pray, do not fail to scratch on it, 

The name of old Rossum, the beau. 

“ Then take you these dozen good fellows, 

And stand them all round in a row; 

And drink out of a big-bellied bottle, 

‘ Farewell to old Rossum, the beau.’ ” 


THE HISTORY OF THE STOYE. 

For an article of such general use, 
so indispensable in every household, it 
is astonishing how brief has been the 
history of stoves. With all of its 
multiplicity of forms, patterns, and 
varieties, it is a creation of the present 
age — a modern convenience — which 
our grandfathers knew naught of. 
The Troy Times thus relates the his¬ 
tory of stoves in general : 

“ Stoves are comparatively of recent 
general use, though they were known 
in this country as early as 1790. In 
that year a Mr. Pettibone, of Philadel¬ 
phia, was granted a patent for a stove, 
which was claimed to be capable of 
warming houses by pure heated air. 
Pettibone's stove was soon after put 
up in the almshouse at Philadelphia, 
and Drs. James and Chapman, and 
several members of Congress, gave 
testimonials of its utility for warming 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


57 


and ventilating churches, courts of 
justice, hospitals, manufactories, etc. 
This was probably the first attempt to 
use stoves, at least in this country . 
From this time forward for many 
years, the stove was confined to public 
places, its use for warming private 
houses, or for cooking purposes not 
having been thought of. The long 
box stove, capable of taking three feet 
wood, was the only stove our ancestors 
knew anything about. 

Cooking stoves have come in use 
within the last few years. The first 
advance toward a cooking stove was 
making the Franklin stove with an 
oven; and the first that deserves the 
name of cooking stove was an oblong 
affair having an oven running the 
whole length, the door of which was 
in front and directly over the door for 
supplying fuel, and having also a boil¬ 
er-hole and a boiler on the back part 
of the top near the pipe. Then a 
stove similar in arrangement, with 
swelling or elliptical sides, was made, 
generally called the nine-plate stove. 
About the year 1812 cooking stoves 
were made at Hudson from patterns 
made by a Mr. Hoxie, who was the first 
to elevate the fire-box above the bot¬ 
tom. This improvement was patented, 
and was sustained in suits against par¬ 
ties who in any way elevated fire from 
the bottom. In Hoxie’s cooking stove 
the fire was made above and upon the 
the oven, and he was the first who 
made any stove in which the flame was 
made to descend from the top to the 
bottom of the oven. In 1815, William 
T. James, of Lansingburg, afterward 
of Troy, made the stove known as the 
“James Stove,” which not only con¬ 
tinued a leading cooking stove for 
nearly a quarter of a century, but may 
yet be seen on board of small eastern 
coasting vessels, where, being cheap 


durable, it supplies the place of a ca¬ 
boose. James stove is probably better 
known as the “ Saddle Bags Stove.” 

The first heating of houses by flues, 
from anthracite coal, was accomplished 
by a Professor Johnson, of Philadel¬ 
phia, about 1825. The Professor suc¬ 
ceeded in heating a large house by 
means of a furnace in a cellar, sur¬ 
rounded by an air chamber of brick 
work, whence the gaseous products of 
combustion were carried through the 
building, passing through cylindrical 
drums on the first and third floor, and 
out at the top. This mode of warm¬ 
ing buildings rapidly grew into favor 
as our people came to be well ac¬ 
quainted with coal. 

The ample supply of wood in the 
country was for many years in the 
way of the successful introduction of 
stoves. This fuel was at every man’s 
door, and houses were all supplied with 
ample fire places. The cost of prepar¬ 
ing wood for stoves was an item which 
quite offset any economic advantages 
they had otherwise. And, besides, the 
people were loth to give up the cheer¬ 
ful, open fire place for “ a little black 
box in the corner,” as the stove was 
disparagingly called. Even now the 
West uses few stoves compared with 
the East; and Eastern manufacturers 
make stoves adjusted to wood for the 
Western market, while those for the 
market of the Central and Middle 
States are nearly all coal burners. 


ORIGIN OF THE WORD TARIFF. 


Prof. Perry, in a recent address 
before a Western agricultural society, 
gave an interesting historical sketch 
of the orgin of the word tariff. There 
is a town in Spain, in the narrowest 
part of the Straits of Gibralter, named 









58 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Tarifa. It was named after a preda¬ 
tory chief, who took up his residence 
there more than a thousand years ago. 
Afterward the Moors built a strong 
castle at Tarifa, and compelled vessels 
passing through the Straits to stop 
.and pay duties. Hence the word tariff, 
from Tarifa, the town where black mail 
was so long levied. 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S MODE OF 
BUOYINO VESSELS. 

Patented May 22, 1849. 

In discharging our accustomed round 
of duties at the Patent Office recently, 
our attention was called to a model of 
a patented mode of buoying vessels, 
the invention of no less a personage 
than a President of the United States. 

We believe this is the first instance 
of an inventor receiving the highest 
honor which can be conferred by a 
republican people. We think other of 
our inventors may take courage and 
not despair of yet becoming Presidents. 
We presume the thought of becoming 
a President never entered Mr. Lincoln’s 
thoughts at the time he was contriving 
his invention and seeking a patent. 

The invention relates to an entirely 
novel mode of buoying steamboats 
over bars and shoal places in rivers. 
Buoyant chambers, constructed in the 
same manner as bellows, with the tops 
and bottoms of boards or metal plates, 
and the sides of india-rubber cloth or 
other flexible material, are secured at 
the sides of the vessel under the guards. 
Stiff rods pass through the tops of the 
chambers, and are secured rigidly to 
their bottom boards, so that, by push¬ 
ing down these rods, the chambers are 
expanded, and by drawing the rods up, 
the chambers are folded snugly under 
the guards. For working the rods up 


and down, endless ropes are secured 
to them and passed several times around 
a central shaft which extends through 
the middle of the boat just below the 
upper deck, the ropes passing over 
rollers or sheaves secured to the lower 
side of the upper deck, and thence 
down by the sides of the rods, under 
sheaves secured to the lower deck, so 
that, by turning the shaft in one di¬ 
rection, the rods are forced down and 
the chambers expanded; while, 1 y 
turning it in the other direction, rods 
are drawn up and the chambers are 
folded. The shaft is worked by the 
engine or hand power, which ever may 
be most convenient. 

This invention illustrates forcibly 
the variety of talents possessed by 
men ; it is probable that among our 
readers there are thousands of mechan¬ 
ics who would devise a better appar¬ 
atus for buoying steamboats over 
bars, but how many of them would be 
able to compete successfully in the 
race for the Presidency ?—Scientific 
American. 


FIRST BLOOD OF THE REVOLUTION. 

It is generally believed that on April 
19,1775, at Lexington, the first blood 
was shed, but Westminster, Vt., files a 
prior claim in favor of one William 
French, who was killed on the night 
of March 13, 1775, at the King’s Court 
House, in what is now Westminster. 
At that time Vermont was a part of 
New York, and the King’s court offi¬ 
cers, together with a body of troops, 
was sent on to Westminster to hold 
the usual session of the court. The 
people, however, were exasperated, and 
assembled in the court house to resist. 
A little before midnight the troops of 
George III. advanced and fired indis¬ 
criminately upon the crowd, instantly 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


59 


killing William French, whose head 
was pierced by a musket ball. He was 
buried in the churchyard, and a stone 
erected to his memory, with this quaint 
inscription: 

u In memory of William French, 
Who Was Shot at Westminster, March 
ye 12th, 1775, by the hand of the 
Cruel Minesterial tools of George ye 
3d at the Court-house at a 11 o’clock at 
Night, in the 23d year of his age 

“ Here William French, his body lies. 

For Murder his Blood for Vengeance Cries? 
King George, the Third, his Tory crew 
That with a ball his head Shot through, 

For Liberty and his Country’s Good 
He lost his Life, his Dearest blocd.” 


GOLD COIN.—HOW II IS MADE. 


Gold ordinarily comes into the mint 
in shape of dust, scales or bars, the 
first two coming from the placer or 
gravel mines, and the last usually from 
the quartz, having been melted and 
retorted at the mills. Each deposit is 
separately weighed and numbered by 
the receiving clerk, and is placed in an 
iron box by itself, accompanied by a 
tag indicating its number, and there¬ 
after that deposit retains that number 
until it is ready for coinage, the name 
of the depositor only being known to 
the receiving clerk and the assayer. It 
is then sent to the melting room, in 
charge of the melter and refiner, where 
it is melted and run into a bar about 
the shape of a brick, and stamped with 
the number of the tag by which it 
was accompanied, and is returned to 
the receiving clerk to be weighed again, 
to ascertain what loss, if any, has 
occurred in the melting. Then it is 
sent to the sampling room, where a 
small piece about the size of a half 
dime, is cut from one corner of the 
top, and a like piece from the diagonal 


corner of the bottom, and the bar is 
then returned and locked up in the 
vault to await the report of the assayer 
upon the value of the deposit, which 
value is to be ascertained by assays 
from the pieces chipped from the bar 
as before indicated, and upon his report 
the depositor, if he so desires, is paid 
at once without awaiting the process 
of coining the metal deposited by him. 

Deposits are received up to twelve 
o’clock noon, and all the deposits 
received are melted and chipped and 
the assays made during the day, each 
deposit being kept separate. The fol¬ 
lowing day these several deposits are 
run into what are termed unparted 
bars, which are also chipped and as¬ 
sayed, and these bars are sent to the 
refinery. 

Gold very rarely comes to the mint 
perfectly pure. It always contains 
more or less silver, and generally some 
iron or other base metal. It is parted 
or separated from these at the refinery, 
and the gold and silver contained in 
the bars sent from the mint to the 
refinery, is returned to the mint in the 
shape of fine gold and fine silver, sup¬ 
posed to be freed from all impurities. 
These bars are weighed and the gold 
bars are again chipped for assay in the 
same manner as the original deposit, 
and if found to be pure, the gold is 
alloyed with the necessary quantities 
of silver and copper to bring it to the 
coin standard — .900 gold, .005 silver, 
and .095 copper — and is melted and 
run into ingots. These ingots are also 
chipped and assayed, and if found to 
be of the exact standard of fineness, 
are sent to the coiners’ department. 

In the coiners’ department the ingots 
are first rolled into strips about five 
feet in length and of the required 
width and thickness of the coin pro¬ 
posed to be made. They are then an- 








60 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


nealed by being placed in copper tubes, 
probably fifteen or twenty strips in a 
tube, which is closed up and put into 
an oven and treated to a cherry red 
heat, and after being cooled they are 
taken out and run through a cutting 
machine which cuts out the shape and 
as near as possible the size of the re¬ 
quired coin. The blanks, as they are 
called, are then taken to the adjusting 
rooms, where each piece is carefully 
weighed, and if found to be too heavy, 
enough is filed off the edges to bring it 
to the standard weight, and any that 
are found to be light are returned to 
be re-melted. 

The adjusting room is connected 
with the coiners’ department, and the 
adjusters are all women, the only fe¬ 
males employed in the mint. There 
are from twenty to thirty of them. 
Their work is not heavy, but it re¬ 
quires some degree of skill and very 
great care. 

After being properly adjusted the 
blanks are run through the milling 
machine which thickens the edges and 
makes it the proper size. They are 
then stamped by a press of immense 
power, a power equal to 175 tons 
weight being required and used to 
stamp each double eagle, the impres¬ 
sion being made on both sides at the 
time. This is the last process, and the 
coin is then turned over to the Treas¬ 
urer to be paid out as required. 


HISTORY OF MATCHES. 

The history of the match dates back 
nearly one hundred years, but the be¬ 
ginning of their practical use comes 
within the memory of many living 
men. In 1680, Godfrey Haucknitz, in 
London, applied phosphorus to the 
making of matches. He first rubbed 
it between folds of brown paper till it 


took fire, and it was then made to 
ignite a stick, one end of which had 
been dipped in sulphur. This was the 
earliest form of the common match, 
such as we use to-day, but the cost of 
phosphorus prevented its being very 
largely used for a long time. A very 
few matches, consisting of small sticks 
dipped first in sulphur and then in 
a composition of chlorate of potash, 
flowers of sulphur, gum or sugar, and 
cinnabar, which last colored them red, 
were sold in a little box for fifteen 
shillings, or nearly four dollars. Ac¬ 
companying these in the box there was 
a little bottle of sulphuric acid, into 
which the match being dipped, it was 
instantly ignited by the chemical ac¬ 
tion induced between the acid and 
chlorate of potash. In 1828, Mr. John 
Walker, a chemist in England, intro¬ 
duced the lucifer match, which was 
lighted by drawing it rapidly over 
folded sandpaper. From this time on, 
the steps of improvement were many, 
and now we have nothing in our houses 
more useful, more convenient and more 
inexpensive than the match. ■ 


HOW GREENBACK PAPER IS MADE. 

All the paper for money issued by 
the United States government is man¬ 
ufactured on a sixty-two inch Fon- 
driner machine, at the Glen Mills, 
near West Chester, Pa. Short pieces 
of red silk are mixed with the pulp in 
the engine, and the finished stuff is 
conducted to the wire without pass¬ 
ing through any screen which might 
retain the silk threads. By an ar¬ 
rangement above the wire cloth a 
shower of short pieces of fine blue silk 
thread is dropped in steaks upon the 
paper while it is boing formed. The 
upper side, on which the blue silk is 
dropped, is the one used for the face of 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the notes, and from the manner in 
which the threads are applied, must 
show them more distinctly than the 
reverse side, although they are im¬ 
bedded deeply enough to remain fixed. 
The mill is guarded by officials night 
and day to prevent the abstraction of 
any paper. 


HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY. 

The only electric fact known to the 
ancients is that referred to in the writ¬ 
ings of Thales, 600, B. C., that amber 
when rubbed would attract light and 
dry bodies. The science of electricity 
dates properly from the year 1600, A. D-, 
whern Gilbert, of Colchester, published 
a book giving a list of substances 
which possessed the same properties 
as amber, and speculates on magnetic 
and electric forces. He is the inventor 
of the word electricity, which is de¬ 
rived from the Greek word, electron , 
amber. In 1672, Otto von Guericke, 
of Magdeburg, describes among his 
other inventions, the first electric ma¬ 
chine ever made, which consisted of a 
globe of sulphur turned by a handle 
and rubbed by a cloth pressed against 
it by the hand. In 1709, Harksbee 
constructed a machine in which a 
glass cylinder rubbed by the dry hand 
replaced Guericke’s sulphur globe. In 
1729, Grey and Wehler were the first 
to transmit electricity from one point 
to another and to distinguish bodies 
into conductors and non-conductors. 
In 1733 Dufay showed the identity of 
electrics and non-conductors, and was 
the first to discover the two kinds of 
electricity and the principle which 
regulates their action. Up to this 
time the glass tube rubbed by a piece 
of cloth, which Gilbert first intro¬ 
duced was used in all experiments. 
Boze, a professor of Wittenberg, took 


61 


the hint from Harksbee’s machine and 
used a globe of glass for his machine, 
and furnished it with a pine conductor. 
Winkler, at Leipsic, first used a fixed 
cushion in the machine. In 1746 the 
Leyden jar was discovered, accident¬ 
ally, at Leyden, by Muschenbrock. It 
is also claimed by Cumens, a rich Bur¬ 
gess of that town. In 1747, Franklin 
showed the electric conditions of the 
Leyden jar, and in the 3 T ear 1752 
proved the identity of lightning and 
electricity by his famous kite experi¬ 
ment. This was performed about the 
same time by Romas, of the town of 
Narac, in France. Franklin made the 
first lightning conductor in the year 
1760. Ramsden, in 1768, was the first 
to construct a plate machine, and 
Noun, in 1780, a two fluid cylinder 
machine. The condenser was invented 
by Volta in 1782. Galvani, in 1786, 
made the discovery which led to the 
addition of the new branch of the 
science which bears his name.' 


THE ORIGIN AND HISTORY OF ELEC¬ 
TRIC TELEGRAPHY. 


The first electric telegraph appears 
to have been made about the year 1786 ; 
though long before that time, the 
vague idea of a magical magnetic tele¬ 
graph was entertained. Strada, a Jes¬ 
uit priest, in a curious book, published 
in 1649, describes a fabled contrivance 
of two magnetic needles, attached to 
dials, bearing a circle of letters, and 
which possessed the property of always 
indicating the same letter; so that 
when one needle was made to point to 
any particular letter, the other needle, 
however distant at the time, placed 
itself so as to point to the same letter. 

In 1774, George Louis Lesage, a phi¬ 
losopher of French origin at Geneva, 










62 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


constructed an apparatus composed of 
twenty-four wires, corresponding to the 
twenty-four letters of the alphabet, 
and separated from each other by insu¬ 
lators. To the extremity of each one 
of these wires a pith-ball was suspended 
by a silk thread. By touching the 
wires with an electrical machine, the 
other extremity of the conductors — 
the pith-ball — would be repulsed, and 
thus make known the letter indicated. 

In 1793, Claude Chappe, after much 
labor and research, established between 
Paris and Lille the first line of aerial 
telegraph ; and this happy result estab¬ 
lished the success of the system. 

Before this epoch, several philoso¬ 
phers proposed to employ electricity in 
the transmission of despatches, upon 
their knowledge of the phenomenon of 
static electricity, and from their hav¬ 
ing observed its prodigious rapidity. 

The Electric Telegraph, like all great 
inventions, was not the work of a sin¬ 
gle mind. It has followed science in 
different developments, and could not 
have passed the domain of science into 
application, except the laws and prin¬ 
ciples of electricity were known — 
which inspired new efforts that were to 
be crowned by a complete success. 

From 1780 to 1800, Reiser, of Ger¬ 
many, and Salva and Bethancourt, of 
Spain, tried some similar systems. 

In 1800, the curious discoveries of 
Galvani conducted Yolta to the dis¬ 
covery of electric currents and their 
chemical and physiological properties. 
A new era opened for the science, and 
permitted a substitute of permanent 
supply of electricity in place of the 
electrical machine and Leyden jar. 

Dr. Coxe, an American, about the 
same time proposed a telegraph, the 
principle of which consisted in the 
decomposition of chemicals by the 
electric current. 


Mr. Francis Ronalds, in 1816, con¬ 
structed a telegraph, by which he was 
able to send signals with considerable 
facility and rapidity through a dis¬ 
tance of eight miles. His plan was 
very simple. At either end of the 
wire was a clock carrying a light paper 
disc, on which were marked the letters 
of the alphabet, and certain words and 
numbers. By means of a perforated 
cover only one letter was seen at a 
time. As the clocks run together, of 
course the same letter would be visible 
at the same time ; and if an electric 
discharge were sent from one station 
to another when a particular letter 
was exhibited on the dial, the observer 
at the other end would readily know 
the signal intended. 

Harrison Gray Dyar, an American, 
constructed a telegraph, in 1828, at 
the race course on Long Island, and 
supported his wires b} r glass insulators 
fixed on trees and poles. By means of 
common electricity acting on litmus 
paper, he produced a red mark, and 
then passed the current through the 
ground as a return circuit. The differ¬ 
ence of time between the sparks indi¬ 
cated different letters arranged in an 
arbitrary alphabet, and the paper was 
moved by the hand. 

Owing to the use of frictional elec¬ 
tricity, which is too easily dissipated 
and difficult of being confined to con¬ 
ductors, this telegraph could not have 
been of any practical use; although, 
had Mr. Dyar not been prevented, 
through fear of prosecution on a 
charge of conspiracy to send secret 
communication in advance of the 
mail, from prosecuting his discovery, 
he would, undoubtedly, have achieved 
great success, as his system possessed 
many of the principles and features of 
the Morse invention. 

The discovery of the magnetization 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


63 


of soft iron under the influence of cur¬ 
rents of induction, is due to Arago and 
Faraday, but the development of the 
motor function of electricity, or of the 
means by which electro-magnetic power 
can be exerted at a distance, is due to 
the early experiments of the Secretary 
of the Smithsonian Institute, Professor 
Henry, whose discoveries in electro¬ 
magnetism, and especially of the quan¬ 
tity and intensity of the magnet, m 
1830, laid the foundation for all subse¬ 
quent forms of electro-magnetic tele¬ 
graphs, and made succeeding steps com¬ 
paratively easy. 

The determination of laws upon the 
intensity of currents is due to Ohm 
and Pouillet, and the invention of the 
batteries which generate the currents 
belongs to Becquerel, Daniell, Bunsen, 
and Grove. 

Among the philosophers who have 
occupied themselves with this question, 
we cite in order, up to the time when 
the system was perfected : Alexander 
of Edinburgh, M. le Baron Schilling, 
M. Vorselmann de Heer, MM. Gauss 
and Weber, M. Amyot, MM. Breguet 
and Masson, Sir Humphrey Davy, Pro¬ 
fessors Henry and Coxe, and Dr. Jack- 
son. 

MM. Gauss and Weber, in 1834, con¬ 
structed a line of telegraph over the 
houses and steeples of Gottingen. The 
circuit contained about 15,000 feet of 
wire. They used galvanic electricity, 
and applied the phenomenon of mag¬ 
netic induction discovered by Professor 
F araday. 

The slow oscillations of magnetic 
bars caused by the passage of currents, 
and observed through a glass, furnished 
the signals for corresponding. The 
operation was complicated, slow, and 
inefficient. 

M. Steinheil established at Munich, 
and worked in 1837 an electric tele¬ 


graph between two distant points. Up 
to this time the electric telegraph had 
been considered only as a curious theo¬ 
retical science, without possible appli¬ 
cation, as, for the most part, the appa¬ 
ratus required separate wires for each 
letter or signal; but it was not doubted, 
if the practical realization of the idea 
could be arrived at, that they could 
reduce this number to two, or even to 
one, by means of conventional combi¬ 
nations. 

There remained, however, still an 
important question, which experience 
alone could solve,— whether it were 
possible to obtain upon a great length 
of wire sufficient insulation without 
too great expense. The great exten¬ 
sion of the lines of railway in 1838, 
and the necessity felt for the means 
of rapid communication, hastened the 
solution of this question. 

The first electric telegraph estab¬ 
lished in Europe for the actual trans¬ 
mission of dispatches between distant 
points, was between London and Bir¬ 
mingham, in 1838, by Prof. Wheat¬ 
stone. Shortly after, lines were 
constructed by simply suspending the 
wires upon porcelain supports, when 
sufficient intensity was obtained to 
work the apparatus at a great distance. 

The first line in France was con¬ 
structed in 1844, between Paris and 
Rouen, along the line of the railway. 
The lines between Paris and Orleans, 
and Paris and Lille, were constructed 
in the years 1847 and 1848. Shortly 
after, lines were constructed along the 
several lines of railway throughout 
France. 

The first line constructed in the 
United States was put in operation in 
the month of June, 1844, between 
Washington and Baltimore. The next 
year it was continued to New York 
and Boston, and in 1846 to Buffalo 






64 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


and Harrisburg. The succeeding year 
a line was constructed between Buffalo 
and Montreal, and during the same 
season between Boston and Portland. 
The next year, 1848, found the entire 
country excited upon the subject of 
the telegraph, and lines were projected 
and constructed in every direction. 

In 1837, Prof. S. F. B. Morse made 
known to the public his recording 
telegraph, which justly retains his 
name, and of which it appears that he 
had conceived the idea far back as 
1832. Among about sixty-two corw- 
petitors to the discovery of the electric 
telegraph up to 1838, Morse alone, in 
1837, seemed to have reached the most 
perfect result desirable for public and 
practical use. 


FIRST WEEK OF THE TELEGRAPH. 

The telegraph was first put in op¬ 
eration between Washington and Bal¬ 
timore, in the Spring of 1844, and was 
shown without charge until April 1, 
1845. Congress, during the session of 
1844-’45, made an appropriation of 
$8,000 to keep it in operation during 
the year, placing it, at the same time, 
under the supervision of the Post¬ 
master General. He, at the close of 
the session, ordered a tariff of charges 
of one cent, for every four characters 
made by or through the telegraph, ap¬ 
pointing as the operators of the line : 
Mr. Yail, for the Washington station, 
and Mr. H. J. Rodgers for Baltimore. 

The receipts for April 1-3 inclusive, 
were as follows: The first day’s receipts 
were 12^ cents; the second day’s receipts 
were 60 cents; and the third day’s, 
$1.05. 

It should be borne in mind that Mr. 
Polk had just been inaugurated, and, 
as is always the case on the advent of 
a new administration, the city was 


filled with persons seeking for office. 
A gentleman of Virginia, who stated 
that to be his errand to the city, came 
to the office of the telegraph on the 
1st day of April, and desired to see its 
operation. The oath of office being 
fresh in the mind of the operator, and 
he being determined to fulfill it to the 
letter, the gentleman was told of the 
rates of charges, and that he could see 
its operation by sending his name to 
Baltimore, and having it sent back, at 
the rate of four letters or figures for 
a cent; or he might ask Baltimore 
regarding the weather, etc. This he 
refused to do, and coaxed, argued, and 
threatened. He said there could be no 
harm in showing him its operation, as 
that was all he wanted. He was told of 
the oath just taken by the incumbent, 
and of his intention to serve it faith¬ 
fully ; and if it was shown to him by 
the passage of a communication gra¬ 
tuitous^, it would be a violation of his 
oath of office. He stated he had no 
change. In reply, he was told that 
if he would call upon the Postmaster 
General and obtain his consent the op¬ 
eration should be shown him gratis, the 
operator would cheerfully comply to 
almost any extent. He stated, in reply, 
that he knew the Postmaster General, 
and had considerable influence with 
some officers of the government, and 
that he (the operator) had better show 
it to him at once, intimating that he 
might be subjected to some peril by 
refusing. He was told that no regard 
would be paid to the extent of his in¬ 
fluence, etc., be it great or little ; that 

he did not think he was at liberty to 

•/ 

use the property of the government 
for individual benefit when under oath 
to exact pay ; and cited the rules of 
the post office in relation to the car¬ 
riage of letters ; but he was willing to 
do as directed by the Postmaster Gen- 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


65 


eral (Hon. Cave Johnson). The dis¬ 
cussion lasted almost an hour, when 
the gentleman left the office in no 
pleasant mood. 

This was the patronage received by 
the Washington office on the 1st, 2d 
and 3d of April. On the 4th, the same 
gentleman “turned up” again and re¬ 
peated some of his former arguments. 
He was asked if he had seen the Post¬ 
master General, and obtained his con¬ 
sent to his request; to which he 
replied he had not. After considerable 
discussion, which was rather amusing 
than vexatious, he said that he had 
nothing less than a twenty-dollar bill 
and one cent, all of which he pulled 
out of his breeches pocket. He was 
told that he could have a cent’s worth 
of telegraphing, if that would answer, 
to which he agreed. After his many 
maneuvers, and his long agony, the 
gentleman was finally gratified in the 
following manner : Washington asked 
Baltimore, 4—which means, in the list 
of signals, “What time is it?” Bal¬ 
timore replied, 1 — which meant, “ 1 
o’clock.” The amount of the opera¬ 
tion was one character each way, mak¬ 
ing two in all, which, at the rate of 
four for a cent, would amount to half 
a cent exactly. He laid down his cent, 
hut he was told that half a cent would 
suffice if he could produce the change. 
This he declined to do, and gave the 
whole cent, after which, being satisfied, 
he left the office. 

Such was the income of the Wash¬ 
ington office for the first four days of 
April, 1845. On the 5th, twelve and 
a half cents were received. The 6th 
was the Sabbath. On the 7th, the re¬ 
ceipts ran up to sixty cents; on the 
8th, to $1.32 ; on the 9th to $1.04. It 
is worthy of remark, concludes Mr. 
Vail, that more business was done by 
the merchants after the tariff was laid 


than when the service Avas gratuit¬ 
ous. 

The above details may strike many 
as very trifling and undignified. So 
they are, in themselves ; but therein 
consists their charm and their relevan¬ 
cy to the subject in hand. Deep in 
our nature there is a principle that 
loves to contrast small beginnings with 
grand results. History is full of this. 
Development is characteristic of the 
works of God, and of the works of 
man as well. Nothing great ever 
comes all of a sudden. To the igno¬ 
rant and unobservant it may seem so, 
but it only seems, for it is not so. It 
was not thus with the commonest im¬ 
plement of the peasant — the plow, 
for instance. Only of late has this — 
the pioneer and the honored symbol of 
civilization — risen to its present ad¬ 
vanced degree of improvement, for 
doubtless it has not yet reached perfec¬ 
tion. So of every other in the service 
of man. The telegraph is but a par¬ 
ticular instance of a general law— 
development. To note a single point 
in its germ-period was all that the 
writer proposed to do. 

As a finale to this humble scrap of 
history, it would seem to be eminently 
fit to reproduce a relation made by Pro¬ 
fessor Morse, which will explain itself. 
It may be proper to add, however, that 
the date of the midnight passage of 
the Telegraph bill must have been in 
May, 1843, as the passage of the dis¬ 
patch suggested by the lady friend of 
Mr. Morse was on Monday, May 27, 
1844, which, he says, was about a year 
after the law was passed. 

Says Professor Morse : “ My bill haa 
indeed passed the House of Represent¬ 
atives, and it was on the calendar of 
the Senate ; but the evening of the 
last day had commenced, with more 
than one hundred bills to be consid- 





06 


THE TEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ered and passed upon before mine could 
be reached. 

u Wearied out with the anxiety of 
suspense, I consulted one of my sena¬ 
torial friends. He thought the chance 
of reaching it to be so small that he 
advised me to consider it as lost. In a 
state of mind, gentlemen, which I must 
leave you to imagine, I returned to my 
lodgings to make preparations for re¬ 
turning home the next day. My funds 
were reduced to a fraction of a dollar. 
In the morning, as I was about to sit 
down to breakfast, the servant an¬ 
nounced that a young lady desired to 
see me in the parlor. It was the 
daughter of my excellent friend and 
college class-mate, the Commissioner 
of Patents (Henry L. Ellsworth). She 
had called, she said, by her father’s 
permission, and in the exuberance of 
her own joy, to announce to me the 
passage of my Telegraph bill, at mid¬ 
night, but a moment before the Sen¬ 
ate’s adjournment ! 

“ This was the turning point of the 
telegraph invention in America. 

u As an appropriate acknowledg¬ 
ment for the young lady’s sympathy 
and kindness — a sympathy which 
only a woman can feel and express — I 
promised that the first dispatch, by the 
first line of telegraph from Washing¬ 
ton to Baltimore, should be indited by 
her. To which she replied : “ Re¬ 

member, now, I shall hold you to your 
word.’ 

“ In about a year from that time the 
line was completed, and everything 
being prepared, I apprised my young 
friend of the fact. A note from her 
inclosed this dispatch: 

‘what hath god wrought.’ 

“ These were the first words that 
passed on the first completed line of 
electric wires in America. None could 
have been chosen more in accordance 


with my own feelings. It baptized the 
American Telegraph with the name of 
its author .”—Scientific American. 


ORIGIN OF THE ATLANTIC TELE¬ 
GRAPH. 


The origin of the Atlantic telegraph 
belongs exclusively to Gen. Horatio 
Hubbell, a distinguished member of 
the Philadelphia bar, who projected 
and originated the grand idea as early 
as 1848, and to his associate, J. H. 
Sherburne, who had the moral courage 
to join Gen. Hubbell in signing his 
memorial to Congress, detailing the 
plan, and asking governmental assist¬ 
ance in carrying it out. 

This memorial is the origin of the 
Atlantic telegraph, and was presented 
to the Senate of the United States by 
the Vice President, Hon. G. M. Dallas, 
and to the House by J. R. Ingersoll, 
on the 29tli ot January, 1849. When 
first published, it was treated as a 
chimera of the wildest kind, and the 
memorialists, if not mad, as nearly so 
as possible. When presented in the 
Senate by Vice President Dallas, the 
greater part of that body were for 
throwing it under the table ; but one 
Senator (says Mr. Dallas in a note to 
Gen. Hubbell, dated March 18, 1854), 
Jefierson Davis, moved that it be re¬ 
ferred to the Committee on Commerce, 
remarking that u the world was not 
yet prepared for the project, but it 
might be soon.” This memorial is re¬ 
corded on the Senate journal of the 
day it was presented, and will speak 
for itself. The idea of establishing a 
transatlantic telegraph with Gen. Hub¬ 
bell was not a vague and impulsive 
one, but was the result of long and 
patient study, investigation and in¬ 
quiry of an original and practical 
mind, which, while it thoroughly com- 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


67 


pretended the gigantic character of 
the undertaking, was yet alive to and 
singularly suggestive of the obstacles 
to be encountered and the means of 
overcoming them. In the memorial, 
the existence of the plateau or table 
land between Newfoundland and Ire¬ 
land is first announced to the world 
as the course where the telegraphic 
communication would be established 
betwen the Old and New continents. 
The words of the memorial are explicit 
on this point, as will be seen by the 
following extract from it: 

a Your memorialists proceed to say, 
that from many observations that have 
been made, there is incontestible evi¬ 
dence of the existence of a submarine 
table land, extending from the Banks 
of Newfoundland across the Atlantic 
Ocean to the mouth of the British 
Channel. This is proved by the altered 
color of the sea water, which has a 
different appearance in unfathomable 
places from what it has in shallow 
spots. This, combined with the vol¬ 
canic construction of Iceland and the 
Azores, and the situation of that por¬ 
tion of the ocean that lies between 
both these volcanic groups, has led to 
the conclusion that there has been a 
lifting up of the bottom of the sea, 
through the agency of a Plutonic 
power, and that the bottom thus ele¬ 
vated appears to be cut through in 
many places by deep water channels. 
The appearance of medusce, polypi, and 
other marine creatures seen upon the 
edge of the discolored water, strength¬ 
ens this opinion.” 

They then proceed to ask that they 
be furnished with a vessel, in order to 
make the necessary surveys and sound¬ 
ings, and it was, no doubt, in accord¬ 
ance with this suggestion that Lieut. 
Berryman was dispatched, and did 
make his soundings over this part of 


the ocean in 1853. Lieut. Maury did 
not make a personal survey himself, 
but made a report upon the soundings 
of Lieut. Berryman, under date of 22d 
of February, 1854 — five years after 
the Hubbell and Sherburne memorial 
had been presented to Congress and 
promulgated to the world. 

From the foregoing indisputed docu¬ 
mentary evidence now on file at Wash¬ 
ington, it is plain that the scheme for 
a transatlantic telegraph had its origin 
in America, and that the mode, means, 
and location to carry the telegraph 
wire or cable across the Atlantic ocean 
were originated by Gen. Hubbell; that 
to him and to his deceased associate, 
Mr. Sherburne, who signed the memo¬ 
rial, is due the exclusive honor of first 
pointing out the existence of the pla¬ 
teau or table land between Newfound¬ 
land aud Ireland, in connection with 
the telegraph cable now successfully 
laid upon it; and finally that these 
gentlemen were the first to publish and 
promulgate the feasibility of such an 
enterprise, and thus enlist in its behalf 
the attention, capital and skill of the 
individuals and governments, through 
whose agency the inceptive idea of the 
great mind in which it originated has 
been successfully carried out in accord¬ 
ance with the original suggestions con¬ 
tained in the Hubbell and Sherburne 
memorial. 

NUMBER OF LETTERS IN DIFFERENT 
LANGUAGES. 

The number of letters in the alpha¬ 
bet of different languages is as follows : 
English, 26 ; French, 25 ; German, 26 ; 
Spanish, 24; Dutch, 26 ; Greek, 24 ; 
Latin, 25 ; Slavonic, 27 ; Arabic, 28 ; 
Persian, 31; Turkish, 33; Georgian, 
36; Hebrew, Chaldea, Syriac and Sa¬ 
maritan, each, 22 ; Coptic, 32 ; San¬ 
scrit, 50 ; Bengalese, 21; Burmese, 19. 









68 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


THE TRADE IN HUMAN HAIR. 


The trade in human hair has become 
quite important during these latter 
years, especially, since it has been con¬ 
sidered fashionable to replace by false 
hair, the deficiencies, real or supposed, 
of nature in this respect. 

The origin of wigs is lost in antiqui¬ 
ty ; their use was abandoned during 
the middle ages, and was not renewed 
until the return of Saint Louis from 
the crusades, when he unfortunately 
became bald and was ordered by his 
physicians to keep his head constantly 
covered. Queen Blanche, his kind- 
hearted wife, inferring from this that 
it was hair that had kept her husband’s 
head warm, obtained from ail the sur¬ 
rounding courtiers a lock of their cap¬ 
illary appendages which she forthwith 
attached to the king’s cap. 

Ever since, Saint Louis has had the 
honor of being considered the patron 
saint of hair-dressers and wig-makers. 

After this period wigs are not men¬ 
tioned in history until the reign of 
King Louis XIV., who, in order to hide 
the unequal hight of his shoulders, 
wore a long wig which covered this 
defect. No man of quality in France 
was allowed to wear his own hair, and 
Binette, the king’s wig-maker, became 
quite a celebrated personage who sold 
some specimens of his handicraft as 
high as one thousand dollars. 

In 1674 the wig-makers as a body 
were duly incorporated, the members 
being allowed to carry side weapons ; 
and they held the exclusive monopoly 
of the trade in human hair, which 
they retained until the revolutionary 
period, which swept all chartered privi¬ 
leges from the soil of France. 

Notwithstanding many eminent pro¬ 
fessors of hygiene give reasons why 
the wearing of false hair is not healthy, 


and although it is also a well known 
fact that a portion of it has been cut 
from the bodies of the dead, still the 
habit of wearing other people’s hair 
has never been discontinued since the 
time of Louis XIV. 

Hair, to be really first quality, should 
be taken from the heads of the living, 
who have had much exposure to the 
air and who have never employed curl¬ 
ing irons. The hair taken from the 
dead is mostly used in the preparation 
of watch chains, bracelets, and similar 
articles. 

France monopolizes the largest share 
of the trade in human hair. Paris, 
Marseilles, Lyons, Caen, Guibray and 
Beaucaire, are the cities which do the 
largest part of this trade, the last three 
holding annual fairs for this specialty. 

In Paris alone there are some thirty 
or forty dealers in hair, each of whom 
employs some three or four regular 
cutters. These, in their turn, have 
several agents or decoys, who visit the 
country, penetrating every village and 
hamlet through the land, where they 
try to induce the simple country girls 
to part with their hair for some trifling 
articles of barter, such as gaudy mus¬ 
lin handkerchiefs or false jewelry. 

Some years back, one firm in Paris 
traded in this way during one season 
nearly one hundred thousand dollar? 
of merchandise; but the present mer^ 
chants are compelled to pay in money 
instead of gewgaws. The peasants 
having learned the value of their hair, 
refuse to be swindled. 

The exports of human Lair from 
France to the United States recentty 
increased so rapidly that the supply 
proved inadequate to meet the require¬ 
ments, and the price was doubled. 
Germany, Belgium, Poland and Russia 
have since joined to furnish us with 
our supplies. 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


GO 


Another reason for the high price 
paid for hair is the well-ascertained 
fact, that, as education spreads in 
France, the country girls refuse to sell 
their hair; one of the principal mo¬ 
tives for which is, that many of the 
young Frenchmen who have been 
dratted into the imperial army, on 
their liberation from service and re¬ 
turn home, are averse to marrying the 
short-cropped and disfigured sweet¬ 
hearts they find on their return from 
the garrison towns, where the ladies 
all wore long hair, waterfalls, or 
chignons. 

Some years back, the hair-cutting 
agents managed to obtain a full supply 
from Normandy and Brittany alone ; 
but they have now to travel over the 
whole of France, Italy and Sicily. 
The total annual crop of the globe 
is at present about one million of 
pounds. 

The northern hair is fine and soft; 
the southern is best fitted for curling. 

Two clippings are made annually, 
one in the spring of the year the other 
in the autumn, the latter being con¬ 
sidered of inferior quality. 

The collected hair is tied into sepa¬ 
rate coils and thrown loosely into sacks, 
and forwarded to the merchants who 
must purchase or refuse the whole lot, 
as they are not allowed the privilege 
of assorting. As the hair from differ¬ 
ent portions of the same head varies in 
length and quality, it has to be picked 
and sorted by being put through six or 
seven successive operations, the first of 
which is to clear it of nits, or the ad¬ 
herent eggs of lice, which are abund¬ 
ant in the hair of the women of Italy 
and Brittany. 

Hair destined for curling or for ring¬ 
lets is rolled on small wooden rollers 
about four inches long, covered with 
paper, tightly bound, boiled, and, last¬ 


ly, dried in an oven at a moderate heat. 
The cost of hair nearly quadruples 
from the time it is cut until it gets 
into the hands of the retailer. He in 
his turns attaches a quite arbitrary 
higher price to the same, in accordance 
with the presumed fortune of his cus¬ 
tomers, or the difficulty he is supposed 
to have experienced in finding a par¬ 
ticular tint suited to some special taste 
or to the complexion of countenance. 
His price may vary, for a head of hair, 
from two dollars to three hundred 
times that amount. 

The art of dyeing the hair has 
reached such perfection in our day, 
that, excepting very fiery red, fair 
blondes and silvery white, which are 
difficult to imitate, all colors sell for 
identical prices. 

Theatrical wigs having to be seen at 
a distance, are cheap, with the occa¬ 
sional exception of the private proper¬ 
ty of some particular star actor. 

It is nearly useless to add that the 
cast-off coils, knots, chignons, fronts, 
curls, and wigs are collected, cleaned, 
carded, and serve over and over again, 
spread over paddings of horse hair, or 
some other material, to adorn the heads 
of our fashionable belles. 


THE HEALTHFULNESS OF LEMONS. 

When people feel the need of an 
acid, if they would leave vinegar alone 
and use lemons or apples, they would 
feel just as well satisfied and receive no 
injury. A suggestion may not come 
amiss as to a good plan, when lemons 
are cheap in the market. A person 
should then purchase several dozen at 
once, and prepare them for use in the 
warm, weak days of the Spring and 
Summer, when acids, especially citric 
and malic, or the acid of lemons, are 
so grateful and useful. Press your 






70 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


hand on the lemon and roll it back 
and forth briskly on the table, to make 
it squeeze more easily ; then press the 
juice into a bowl or tumbler — never 
into tin ; strain out all the seeds, as 
they give a bad taste. Remove all the 
pulp from the peels, and boil in water 
— a pint for a dozen pulps — to extract 
the acid. A few minutes 1 boiling is 
enough ; then strain the water with 
the juice of the lemons; put a pound 
of white sugar to a pint of the juice ; 
boil ten minutes, bottle it, and your 
lemonade is ready. Put a tablespoon¬ 
ful • or two of this lemon sirup in a 
glass of water, and you have a cooling, 
healthful drink. 


HOW BRONZE STATUES ARE CAST. 

Among the various branches of fine- 
art metal work, the casting of bronze 
statuary, a chef-d’oeuvre of Elkington’s 
establishment, possesses perhaps as 
many points of interest as any. A 
leading process of bronze casting is 
known, says the Engineer , as the cire 
perdue, or wax process. A structure 
of iron bars, forming the skeleton of 
the statue, sustains the core. This 
rough angular outline stands on a kind 
of platform, having a fire-hole beneath 
for the purpose of melting the wax 
when the statue is completed. A mix¬ 
ture of clay, pounded brick, and other 
material, capable of being easily worked 
when moist, and very solid when dry, 
is then used for building up the skele¬ 
ton, so as to present the general con¬ 
tour of the figure, but less than the 
proposed statue by just the thickness 
of the metal to be employed. Over all 
this is placed an equal layer of wax, on 
which all the details are expressed by 
the sculptor. “ When the work is sat¬ 
isfactory from every point of view, 
ascending rods of wax representing 


channels, by which air is to find exit 
on the metal entering the molds, are 
placed wherever required. Viewed in 
this state, the model and its accom¬ 
paniments strongly suggest the venous 
and arterial system of the human body, 
as shown in anatomical works, with 
the difference that the wax rods are 
external to the model of the body, 
which is visible through the inter¬ 
vening mesh-work. The whole model 
and rods are then painted over with 
fine loam in a liquid state, the process 
being repeated until the crust is strong 
enough to sustain a thick loam plaster. 
It is then bound with iron hoops, and 
a fire is lighted beneath the platform. 
The outer coating of wax, exactly rep¬ 
resenting the metal to be cast, is melted 
out, and the mold is intensely heated 
until dry enough to receive the molten 
metal from a reverberatory furnace ad¬ 
jacent to the mold. Jets are made for 
the introduction of the metal, and the 
apertures left by the melting of the 
wax rods afford a ready mode of exit 
for the air. The plug of the furnace 
is withdrawn, the flowing metal fills 
the mold, and the statue is completed. 
This process is somewhat hazardous, 
seeing that any defect in the casting 
would completely destroy the long 
labor of the artist. 11 


ANCIENT BOOKBINDING. 

The old stamped leather bindings of 
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries 
are often beautifully executed, and ex¬ 
ceedingly interesting. Jean Grolier, 
Viscount d’Aguisi, one of the four 
treasurers of France, (born at Lyons 
1479, died 1565), collected a magnifi¬ 
cent library, and had the books splen¬ 
didly bound. In 1675, his library was 
dispersed. Gascon, the celebrated bind¬ 
er of that time, was chiefly employed 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


71 


by Grolier, but the designs are said to 
have been composed by himself in 
moments of leisure. A wood cut of one 
of these bindings will be found in 
Shaw’s u Decorative Arts, Ecc. and 
Civil, of the Middle Ages.” It had the 
usual inscription : “ Io Grolierii et 

amicorum ,” indicating that it was for 
the use of his friends as well as him¬ 
self. The collection of Mr. Edwards 
was very rich in these volumes, and 
large prices were realized. A colored 
plate of great beauty will be found in 
Shaw’s work, of a book belonging to 
the same style and period, though it 
cannot be proved to have belonged to 
the Chevalier Jean Grolier. Aldus, the 
famous printer of Venice, printed the 
works of Machiavelli in 1540, in four 
volumes. Grolier had his copy bound 
in four different patterns, and one vol¬ 
ume was sold at the Libri sale for one 
hundred and fifty pounds. At the 
same sale, two volumes, which formerly 
belonged to the library of Diana of 
Poitiers, beautifully bound, were sold 
for eighty and eight} 7 -five pounds re¬ 
spectively. The celebrated artist, “le 
petit Bernard,” is said to have been 
employed on them. At the library at 
Treves is a manuscript studded with 
heads wrought in fine cameos. 

In the middle of the sixteenth cen¬ 
tury, leaves of paper were pasted to¬ 
gether for bindings, wood having been 
previously used for the purpose. Mr. 
Thoms says the originator of binding 
in cloth was Mr. ft. E. Lawson, of Stan¬ 
hope street, Blackfriars, formerly in 
the employ of Mr. Charles Sully; and 
the first book bound in cloth was a 
manuscript volume of music, which 
was subsequently purchased by Mr. 
Alfred Herbert, the marine artist. On 
the volume being shown to^the late 
Mr. Pickering, who was at the time 
(1823) printing a diamond edition of 


“ the classics,” he thought this mate¬ 
rial would be admirably adapted for 
the covers of the work. The cloth 
was purchased at the corner of Wilder¬ 
ness row, St. John’s street, and five 
hundred copies of the Diamond Classics 
were covered by Mr. Lawson with cloth. 
Shakespeare’s plays were also issued in 
this form, and these works were the 
first books bound in cloth. 

The custom of chaining books to 
desks in churches is said to have orig¬ 
inated from an act of Convocation in 
1562, ordering that Nowell’s Cate¬ 
chism, the Articles, and Bishop Jew¬ 
ell’s Apology should be taught in uni¬ 
versities and cathedral churches. But 
the custom has been traced back as far 
as Sir Thomas Lyttleton, who, by his 
will, dated 1481, ordered some of his 
works to be chained in different 
churches. St. Bernard, in 1153, in one 
of his sermons, actually alludes to some 
such custom. 

It is probable that there was no 
specimen of velvet binding before the 
fourteenth century. In the will of 
Lady Fitzhugh, c. 1427, several books 
are bequeathed: “ I wyl that my son 
Robert a Sautre covered with rede vel¬ 
vet, and my doghter Mariory a Primer 
cou’ed in rede, and my doghter Darcy 
a Sauter cou’ed in bleu, and my dogh¬ 
ter Mai de Eure a Prim’r cou’ed in 
bleu.” Queen Elizabeth had a little 
volume of prayers bound in solid gold 
suspended by a chain at her side. The 
Countess of Wilton in her “Art of 
Needlework,” says the earliest speci¬ 
men of needlework binding remaining 
in the British Museum is Fichetus 
(Guil.) Rhetoricum, Libri tres (Impr. 
in Membranis), 4to, Paris ad Sorbonse, 
1471. It is covered with crimson satin, 
on which is wrought with the needle a 
coat of arms, a lion rampant in gold 
thread in a blue field, with a transverse 





72 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


badge in scarlet silk ; the minor orna¬ 
ments are all wrought in fine gold 
thread. 

The next in date in the same collec¬ 
tion is a description of the Holy Land, 
in French, written in Henry VII.’s 
time. It is bound in rich maroon vel¬ 
vet, with the royal arms, the garter, 
and motto embroidered in blue; the 
ground crimson ; and the fleurs-de-lis, 
leopards, and letters of the motto in 
gold thread. A coronet of gold thread 
is inwrought with pearls, the roses at 
the corners are in red silk and gold. 
In the Bodleian Library is a volume of 
the Epistles of St. Paul (black letter), 
the binding of which is embroidered 
by Queen Elizabeth ; around the bor¬ 
ders are Latin sentences, etc. Arch¬ 
bishop Parker’s De Antiquitate Brit- 
tanicse Ecclesiae (1572), in the British 
Museum, is richly bound in green vel¬ 
vet, embroidered with animals and 
flowers, in green, crimson, lilac and 
yellow silk, and gold thread. In the 
same collection is a Bible bound for 
James II., showing on the cover his 
initials, J. R., surmounted by a crown, 
and surrounded with borders of laurel, 
the four corners being filled with cher¬ 
ubim. 

The writer of this paper once saw 
at Broomfield, in Essex, a Bible which 
belonged to Charles I. (date 1527, 
Norton and Bell, printers). It is a 
folio, bound in purple velvet; the arms 
of England, richly embroidered in 
raised work on both sides, and on the 
fly leaf is written : u This Bible was 
King Charles the First’s ; afterwards it 
was my grandfather’s, Patrick Young, 
Esq., who was library keeper to his 
Majesty; now given to the church at 
Broomfield by me, Sarah Attwood, 
Aug. 4th, 1723.’ 1 It is a relic little 
known. 

Various kinds of insects, popularly 


called bookworms, do much injury to 
books. A mite (acarus eruditus ) eats 
the paste that fastens the paper over 
the edges of the binding, and loosens 
it. The caterpillar of another little 
moth takes its station in damp old 
books, between the leaves, and there 
commits great ravages. The little 
boring wood beetle also attacks books, 
and will even pierce through several 
volumes. Mr. W. R. Tymms mentions 
an instance of twenty-seven folio vol¬ 
umes being perforated in a straight 
line by the same insect, in such a man¬ 
ner that by passing a cord through the 
perfectly round hole made by it, the 
twenty-seven volumes could be raised 
at once. 


THE GREAT WALL IN CHINA. 

The Chinese have been for the past 
two or three thousand years a wall¬ 
making people. It would bankrupt 
New York or Paris to build the walls 
of the city of Pekin. The great wall 
of China is the great wall of the 
world. It is forty feet high. The 
lower thirty feet is of hewn lime¬ 
stone or granite. Two modern car¬ 
riages may pass each other on the 
summit. It has a parapet throughout 
its whole length, with convenient stair¬ 
cases, buttresses, and garrison-houses 
at every quarter of a mile, and it runs, 
not by cutting down hills and building 
up valleys, but over the uneven crest 
of the mountains and down through 
their gorges, a distance of a thousand 
miles. Admiral Rogers and W. H. 
Seward calculated that it would cost 
more now to build the great wall of 
China through its extent of one thou¬ 
sand miles, than it has cost to build 
fifty-five thousand miles of railroad in 
the United States. What a commen¬ 
tary it is upon the ephemeral range of 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


73 


the human intellect to see this great 
utilitarian, so necessary and effective 
two thousand years ago, now not 
merely useless, but an incumbrance 
and obstruction. 


A SAFETY LIGHT. 

In Paris, the watchmen in all mag- 
azines where inflammable or explosive 
materials are stored, use, for purposes 
of illumination, a light provided ac¬ 
cording to the following method : Take 
an oblong vial of the cleanest glass; 
put into it a piece of phosphorus about 
the size of a pea, upon which pour 
some olive oil heated to the boiling 
point, filling the vial about one-third 
full, and then close the vial with a 
tight cork. To use it, remove the cork 
and allow the air to enter the vial, and 
then recork it. The whole empty space 
in the bottle will then become lum¬ 
inous, and the light obtained will be 
equal to that of a lamp. As soon as 
the light grows weak, its power can be 
increased by opening the vial and 
allowing a fresh supply of air to enter. 
In winter it is sometimes necessary to 
heat the vial between the hands to 
increase the fluidity of the oil. Thus 
prepared, the vial may be used for six 
months. 


SALTPETER AND ITS USES. 

This well-known salt — which is also 
called nitrate of potassa and nitre — 
is determined by analysis to be com¬ 
posed of a mixture of nitric acid and 
potassa, and is found in a natural state 
in many parts of India, Egypt, Italy, 
America, and other countries. It is 
frequently found on walls sheltered 
from rain, and is artificially produced 
by lixiviation from the earths at the 
bottom of cellars, stables, &c. 


The earths containing this salt are 
called nitre beds, and when the product 
is of good quality it possesses consider¬ 
able antiseptic properties. That which 
is of the best quality and well refined, 
is obtained in long transparent crys¬ 
tals. It flashes up when thrown upon 
burning coals, and forms the principal 
ingredient in the manufacture of gun¬ 
powder, besides being extensively used 
in connection with several of the arts. 
It is also used as a medicine; has a 
sharp, acrid, bitterish taste, but cool¬ 
ing; and is employed to some extent in 
the preservation of meats and animal 
fibers. The genuine saltpeter is very 
brittle, but it is not altered by exposure 
to the air. Its specific gravity is 1.933. 

In the manufacture of gunpowder 
the composition (if the substance is of 
good quality) is seventy-six parts of 
nitre, fifteen of charcoal, and nine of 
sulphur, first reduced to a fine powder 
separately, then mixed intimately, and 
subsequently formed into a thick paste 
with water. It is afterward dried, 
sifted and glazed. 

Nitric acid, commonly called acqiia- 
fortis, is prepared by a mixture of 
saltpeter with the oil of vitriol; the 
proportions best adapted for this pur¬ 
pose being three parts by weight of 
nitre and two of oil of vitriol, or one 
hundred of nitre and sixty oil of vit¬ 
riol, previously diluted with twenty of 
water. Either of these proportions 
will produce an excellent acid, and one 
of the most useful known in chemical 
science. 

When the mixture is submitted to 
distillation, it should be placed in glass 
or earthen vessels. The nitric acid 
passes out in the form of vapor, leav¬ 
ing behind in the retort bisulphate of 
potassa. 

In pharmacy and surgery, nitric acid 
is extensively used, especially for de- 











74 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY" OF INFORMATION. 


stroying contageous effluvia. Its color 
is a dark orange red, being highly cor¬ 
rosive. It gives off copious fumes and 
lias a specific gravity of 150. It is 
largely employed for etching on copper 
plates, for engraving, for separating 
silver from gold, etc., etc. By a second 
distillation nitric acid may be obtained 
perfectly colorless. 

The historian, Beckmann, asserts 
that the ancients were unacquainted 
with the properties of saltpeter, which 
seems somewhat improbable in view of 
the considerable quantities found in 
Egypt. The same authority claims 
that the nitrum of the Egyptians was 
really an alkaline salt. He, however, 
concurs in the opinion of others who 
believe that gunpowder was invented 
in India or China, and brought by the 
Saracens into Europe. The consump¬ 
tion of saltpeter for warlike purposes 
is very great, and during actual hostil¬ 
ities of long duration its price is liable 
to frequent and extreme fluctuations. 


HISTORY OF WATER PUMPS. 

Prof. Buhlmann has published a long 
article in a Hanover journal on the 
invention and history of water pumps. 
He concludes that the pump of to-day 
is a Grecian invention, and was prob¬ 
ably made during the reign of Ptole¬ 
mies, Philadelphos and Euergetes, 283 
to 221, B. C. The name, which is ver}^ 
similar in all languages, is derived from 
the Greek word pempo, to send or 
throw. The most ancient description 
that we have of a water pump is by 
Hero of Alexandre. There is no 
authentic account of the general use 
of the pump in Germany previous to 
the beginning of the sixteenth century. 
About the same time the endless chain 
and bucket works for raising water 
from mines began to be replaced by 


pumps. In the seventeenth century 
rotating pumps, like the Pappenheim 
engine with two pistons and the Prince 
Rupert’s pump with one piston, were 
known in Germany. The pumps with 
plunger pistons were invented in 1674 
by an Englishman named Mori and, 
and the double acting pump by a 
French academician, de a Hire. 


PRECAUTIONARY. 

Keep all doors and windows of the 
structure closed until the firemen 
come ; put a wet cloth over the mouth 
and get down on all fours in a smoky 
room; open the upper part of the 
window to get out the smoke; if in a 
theatre, keep cool; descend ladders 
with a regular step, to prevent vibra¬ 
tion. If kerosene just purchased can 
be made to burn in a saucer by igniting 
with a match, throw it away. Put wire 
work over gas lights in show windows ; 
sprinkle sand instead of saw-dust on 
floors of oil stores; keep shavings 
and kindling wood away from steam 
boilers, and greasy rags from lofts, 
cup-boards, boxes, etc.; see that all 
stove pipes enter well in the chim¬ 
ney, and that all lights and fires are 
out before retiring or leaving places of 
business; keep matches in metal or 
earthen vessels, and out of the reach 
of children; and provide a piece of 
stout rope, long enough to reach the 
ground, in every chamber. Neither 
admit any one, if the house be on fire, 
except police, firemen, or known neigh¬ 
bors ; nor swing lighted gas brackets 
against the wall; nor leave small 
children in a room where there are 
matches or an open fire; nor deposit 
ashes in a wooden box or on the floor; 
nor use a light in examining the gas 
metre. Never leave clothes near the 
fire to dry; nor smoke or read in bed 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


75 


by candle or lamp light; nor put 
kindling wood to dry on top of the 
stove ; nor take a light into a closet; 
nor pour out liquor near an open light; 
nor keep burning or other inflammable 
fluids in a room where there is a fire ; 
nor allow smoking about barn or ware¬ 
house.— Dr. Hall. 


CHARCOAL. 

Charcoal surpasses all other sub¬ 
stances in the power which it possesses 
of condensing ammonia within its 
pores, particularly when it has been 
previously heated to redness. It ab¬ 
sorbs ninety times its volume of am- 
monical gas, which may be again sep- 
rated by moistening it with water. It 
is by virtue of this power that the 
roots of plants are supplied in charcoal 
exactly as in humus, with an atmos¬ 
phere of carbonic acid and air, which 
is renewed as quickly as it is abstracted. 
Charcoal has a physical as well as a 
chemical effect on soils, which is de- 
cidly useful. It renders them, as far 
as it is present, light and friable, and 
gives additional warmth to them by 
its color, and retains readily the rays 
of the sun during the day. Wherever 
charcoal has been applied, rust never 
affects the growth of wheat.— Liebig . 


FEMALE SAILORS. 

It is no new thing for women to 
become sailors. We are informed in 
ancient history that Artemesia, Queen 
of Halicarnassus, commanded five ships 
at the defeat of the Persians at Sa!a- 
mis, and made brave resistance, dis¬ 
tinguishing herself by undaunted 
courage and ability, and a perfect 
knowledge of strategy. 

Toward the end of the battle, seeing 
herself in great danger of being taken, 


she lowered her flag and attacked a 
Persian war-vessel with terrible fury. 
Her strategem had the desired effect, 
for her conquerors, believing her vessel 
to be one of their own, failed to pur¬ 
sue her. There are several instances 
on record of American women, wives 
of deceased captains, navigating their 
vessels into port after the death of 
their husbands. 

In the reign of George III. of Great 
Britian, an Irish woman named Han¬ 
nah Whitney served for five years in 
the Royal British Navy, and kept her 
secret so well that she was not known 
to be a woman until she retired from 
the service. A few years later a young 
Yorkshire girl walked from Hull to 
London in search of her lover. She 
found him enlisted on His Majesty’s 
man-of-war Oxford, and thereupon she 
donned a sailor’s suit, assumed the 
name of Charlie Waddell, and enlisted 
on the same ship. Her lover, not 
being as faithful to her as she to him, 
deserted the ship, and in attempting to 
follow his example, she was arrested 
and her sex detected. The officers 
raised a contribution for her, and she 
was dismissed and sent home. 

In 1872, a Mrs. Cola became some¬ 
what famous by serving on board a 
man-of-war as a common sailor. She 
afterward resumed her proper attire, 
and opened a coffee-house for sailors. 
In 1800 a girl of fifteen tried to ship at 
London on board a South Sea whaler, 
and being refused she put on boy’s 
clothes and hired herself to a waterman, 
and became very skillful in row¬ 
ing. She did not learn to swim, how¬ 
ever, and one day, the boat capsizing, 
she was nearly drowned. In the crisis 
her sex was discovered, and she ceased 
to be “ a jolly young waterman,’’ and 
became a domestic servant in her own 
apparel. 










76 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Another girl, aged fourteen, named 
Elizabeth Bowden, being left an or- 
pnan, went up to London in 1807, 
from a village in Cornwall, in search of 
employment. She did not succeed in 
finding such work as she desired, and, 
putting on male attire, she walked to 
Falmouth, and there enlisted as a 
“boy' 1 on hoard His Majesty’s ship-of- 
war Hazard and did good service aloft 
and below. Her sex was finally dis¬ 
covered, however, and by the kindness 
of the officers the poor girl was placed 
in a proper position. Still another, 
named Rebecca Ann Johnson, had a 
cruel father who dressed her as a boy 
when she was thirteen years old, and 
apprenticed her to a collier ship, on 
which she served four years, and then 
left the service because a brutal mate 
gave her a severe beating for being 
slow when called on watch. 

In 1815, when the British war vessel 
Queen Charlotte was paid off, a negro 
woman was found among the crew, 
who had served eleven years at sea un¬ 
der the name of William Brown, and 
had become so expert a sailor that she 
was promoted to be a captain of the 
foretop. She had all the peculiarities 
of a good sailor, and had kept her 
secret so well that no one suspected 
her real sex. This woman had been 
married, and had adopted a sailor’s life 
to escape the abuse of a cruel husband. 


THE CULTIVATION OF FLOWERS. 

In addition to the pleasure that may 
be derived from floriculture, the sani¬ 
tary value of flowers and plants is a 
feature of the subject so important as 
to call for special mention. It was 
known many years ago that ozone is 
one of the forms in which oxygen 
exists in the air, and that it possesses 
extraordinary powers as an oxidant, 


disinfectant, and deodorizer Now, one 
of the most important of late discov¬ 
eries in chemistry is that made by Prof. 
Montogazza, of Pavia, to the effect 
that ozone is generated in immense 
quantities by all plants and flowers 
possessing green leaves and aromatic 
odors. Hyacinths, mignonnette, helio¬ 
trope, lemons, mint, lavender, narcis¬ 
sus, cherry-laurel, and the like, all 
throw off ozone largely on exposure to 
the sun’s rays ; and so powerful is this 
great atmospheric purifier, that it is 
the belief of chemists that whole dis¬ 
tricts can be redeemed from the deadly 
malaria which infests them by simply 
covering them with aromatic vegeta¬ 
tion. The bearing of this upon flower 
culture in our large cities is also very 
important. Experiments have proved 
that the air of a city contains less ozone 
than that of the surrounding country, 
the thickly inhabited parts of cities 
less than the more sparsely built, or than 
the parks and open squares. Plants 
and flowers and green trees can alone 
restore the balance ; so that every little 
flower pot is not merely a thing of 
beauty while it lasts, but has a direct 
and beneficial influence upon the health 
of the neighborhood in which it is 
found.— 


CAMEL-HAIR SHAWLS. 

The material of which the shawls 
are made is wool called touz, procured 
from a goat of a particular species, 
frequenting the valley of Cashmere 
and the neighboring mountains of 
Thibet. 

The fur of this goat is of two sorts • 
the touz, which is a soft woolly under¬ 
coat of grayish hair, and an outer coat 
of long, silken hairs. To make a shawl 
a yard and a half square requires the 
touz of ten goats. 











THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


77 


The Hindoos have no large factories. 
The shawls are made by peasants, who 
divide their time between the field and 
the work-shop. The abode of the 
manufacturer of these magnificent pro¬ 
ductions is a small plot of ground, 
into which he puts four sticks, fastens 
them with cross-beams, constructs walls 
of wicker work, and forms the roof 
with leaves of palm trees; he then 
installs himself in his hut, with his 
family and tools, the latter of which 
are few and of the simplest description. 
The Hindoo knows nothing of the 
mechanical contrivances to aid him in 
his work. He first winds his thread 
on a distaff, erects an oblong frame, 
and then commences his work with a 
large wooden needle, very much in the 
same manner as the workmen in the 
famous French factory of Gobelins so 
well known to all continental travelers. 
His manner of working, as may be 
imagined, is extremely slow ; but it is 
owing to this that the India shawls are 
so much superior to those manufactured 
in Europe, where machinery is em¬ 
ployed instead of the hand. 

The Hindoo weaver requires eighteen 
months to make a long shawl. The 
different parts of it are afterward sewn 
together with great skill. When busi¬ 
ly, engaged the artisan can earn at the 
utmost four annas, or eight cents of 
our money, per day. 

There are not more than four im¬ 
porters of these shawls in New York, 
and the entire trade of the country in 
these articles is in their hands, the cost 
of the goods putting it beyond the 
power of country dealers to carry an 
assorted stock. The price of shawls 
ranges from $400 to $3,000, and, there¬ 
fore, to keep large assortments and to 
hold stocks of varied patterns and dif¬ 
ferent make, requires the investment of 
large sums, which only the mammoth 
4 


houses of that city can afford to make. 
The force of this statement will be 
admitted when it is known that the 
present stock of one Broadway estab¬ 
lishment is estimated at $600,000. In¬ 
dia shawls are named Dacca, Delhi, 
Bombay, Calcutta, Umritzer, etc., after 
the districts in which they were made. 
The labor, however, is what chiefly 
determines the value of a shawl, even 
when the texture is not the finest. 
The retail trade begins with the com¬ 
ing of autumn and lasts until late in 
the winter. 


CASHMERE SHAWLS. 

Finest of all woolen textures and 
most exquisite in workmanship, is the 
Indian shawl. Uniting richness of 
design with freshness of coloring, it 
has no rival in the world. It is not 
only the most splendid tissue ever 
wrought by the hand of man, but it 
is also the most solid and durable, 
whether it adorns the shoulders of a 
modern belle or the waist of an East¬ 
ern potentate. 

The Yale of Cashmere, where roses 
ever bloom, is the seat of this manu¬ 
facture. The Cashmere shawl is woven 
by hand from the finest wool grown 
in Thibet. The wool is first spun and 
then dyed. It is then woven in seg¬ 
ments, which are afterward joined so 
skillfully as to leave no trace of the 
seam visible. The flowers are then 
worked in by hand, after which the 
shawl is cleaned and covered with a 
strong size, made principally of rice, 
when it is ready for the market. 

Shawls were formerly made in pairs, 
but since European dealers have in¬ 
vaded Cashmere, more than two are 
made from the same pattern. 

If destined for Europe, the shawl has 
to be disencumbered of its provisional 








78 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


dressing. For this purpose it is wash¬ 
ed in the river flowing from the Lake 
of Cashmere, whose waters are reputed 
to preserve the colors, a property at¬ 
tributed to the aromatic plants growing 
on its banks. A sheet of paper is laid 
between each fold of the shawl. It is 
enclosed in four or five envelopes, and 
packed with the utmost precaution. 

So delicate and complicated a work 
can only be accomplished by workmen 
versed in it from infancy, and who, 
living upon a handful of rice, are satis¬ 
fied with moderate wages. 

The best workmen scarcely earn more 
than from three to four cents a day. 
The low price of labor will always ren¬ 
der Europe tributary to Asia for this 
luxurious production. A shawl which 
costs $400 at Cashmere, or atUmritsur, 
in the Punjaub, where these shawls are 
also fabricated, could not be made for 
less than $5,000 to $6,500 by European 
workmen. The material only enters 
into twenty per cent, of the cost. Hence 
many French manufacturers have form¬ 
ed establishments at Cashmere and 
Umritsur, where shawls are made by 
native workmen ; but in two many in¬ 
stances they have introduced their own 
designs, which have changed the na¬ 
tional character of the shawl, and often 
in these cases the beautiful tissue is con¬ 
cealed beneath a mass of embroidery. 

Shawls of inferior quality are also 
made at Loodiana, where this industry 
was introduced by a colony from Cash- 
mere, recruited every year from the 
valley. The colors of those made at 
Loodiana are very solid, and bear con¬ 
stant washing. They are wanting in 
brilliancy of tints, consisting princi¬ 
pally of brown, black, dark bottle- 
green, and indigo blue. The colors 
most prized are a dull yellow, shades of 
amaranth, and, most brilliant of all, a 
kind of rose pomegranate of the finest 


thread, used only in shawls of the 
finest quality. The favorite color in 
India is a bright copper green; it 
fades, but is very brilliant and costly, 
and is chiefly employed where palms 
are introduced into the design. An¬ 
other shade of the same color is used 
for the warp of the finest shawls, as is 
also turquoise blue, a most costly color. 

At Loodiana the workmen are seated 
three together at the same strip, in 
front of a cylinder upon which the 
warp is rolled. Each has at least fifty 
shuttles. The chief sits in the middle 
and guides the other two. In one pair 
of shawls is six hundred days’ work; 
they would cost at Loodiana, if of the 
finest quality made, about $100. The 
white shawls with green palms are the 
coarsest. 

These Loodiana shawls are heavy, 
the palms stiff and ungraceful, and 
they are destitute of the softness so 
admired in Europe; of this they gain 
in a great degree by wear and washing. 
From their cheapness Cashmere cannot 
contend with Loodiana in the Indian 
market. What the Indian produces 
by } T ears of manual labor, the European 
now obtains in a short time by means 
of machinery. Shawls are made in 
the Jacquard loom by workmanship, , 
the most intricate and complicated. 

An attempt has been made to imi¬ 
tate these shawls in France, but the 
perfect softness of the Indian shawl 
has never yet been equalled. 

Another great merit of the Indian 
cachemire consists in the harmony and 
effect produced from the proper distri¬ 
bution of color and the rich invention 
of their patterns ; these give them an 
evident superiority over the French 
shawls, which last are chiefly dis¬ 
tinguished by their well chosen designs 
and the perfect regularity of their 
weaving, equally apparent both in the 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


79 


ground and border. The Cashmere 
wool is the most delicate and difficult 
ol all tissues to work, so that the 
Eastern natives, by their success in 
weaving it, have earned the reputation 
of being the most patient and skillful 
weavers in the world. 


INTRODUCTION OF CARPETS. 

Carpets were in use, at least of some 
kind, as early as the days of Amos, 
about 800 B. C, They were spread on 
the ground, on which persons sat who 
dwelt in tents ; but when first used in 
houses, even in the East, we have no 
record. In the twelfth century, car¬ 
pets were articles of luxury ; and in 
England it is mentioned as an instance 
of Becket’s splendid style of living, 
that his sumptuous apartments were 
every day in winter strown with clean 
hay or straw, about A. D., 1160. The 
manufacture of woolen carpets was 
introduced into France from Persia in 
the reign of Henry IV., between 1589 
and 1610. Some artisans, who had 
quitted France in disgust, came to 
England and established the carpet 
manufacture, about 1750. With us, 
as with most nations, Persia and Tur¬ 
key carpets, the former especial^, are 
most prized. The famous Axminster, 
Wilton and Kidderminster manufact¬ 
ure is the growth of the last hundred 
years. The weaver’s engine (often 
called the Dutch loom) was brought 
into use in London from Holland in 
or about the year 1676; since then 
the general principle of the loom has 
been infinitely varied by mechanical 
ingenuity. There are about 250,000 
hand looms in Great Britain, and 
75,000 power looms, each being equal 
to three hand looms, making twenty- 
two yards each per day. The steam 
loom was introduced in the year 1807. 


A HISTORY OF CARPETS IN AMERICA. 


It is traditionally reported that the 
first carpet ever used in a private house 
in the United States, was one found in 
that of Captain William Kidd, the fa¬ 
mous pirate, who was executed in 1701. 
This was probably some small Eastern 
rug which he had taken from some of 
his prizes. From files of the New York 
papers of the year 1760, advertisements 
have been culled showing that Scotch 
and other carpets were offered for sale 
there by merchants engaged in import¬ 
ing from the mother country. Yet 
until after the revolution their use was 
very limited. The rag carpet of strict¬ 
ly domestic make, and the sanded floor, 
satisfied the demands for comfort or 
fashion made by the mothers of the 
republic. The production, however, of 
rag carpets had become considerable 
in order to prepare the way for the 
establishment, in 1761, of a carpet fac¬ 
tory in Philadelphia, by William Peter 
Sprague. Mr. Sprague called the pro¬ 
ducts of his factory Turkey and Ax¬ 
minster carpets, and wove one of them, 
in which the design was the arms of 
the United States, with figures emble¬ 
matic of its achievements. 

In his report as Secretary of the 
American Treasury, Alexander Hamil¬ 
ton, in 1791, recommended that the 
duty of five per cent, upon imported 
carpets should be increased by 2-g- per 
cent., as a further protection to this 
branch of industry. The census of 
1810 returned 9,084 yards of carpetings 
and coverlets as the amount of that 
year’s production in the United States. 
Of this, 7,500 yards were made in 
Philadelphia. 

Up to this time, however, the weav¬ 
ing of carpets both in this country 
and England had been done entirely 
by hand. American invention had 











80 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


been turned in the direction of improv¬ 
ing the looms in ordinary use, arid 
before l c 40 several patents had been 
granted for looms to weave carpets, but 
even then only carpets of the simplest 
kind. The problem of making the 
power loom which should automatically 
perform so apparently difficult a task 
as to weave a two-ply web, so as to 
produce any required pattern, had, in 
England, been abandoned as insolv- 
able. 

It was, however, solved by Mr. Eras- 
tus Bigelow, of Massachusetts, who 
also invented a loom for the manu¬ 
facture of Brussels carpets. His im¬ 
proved loom, by which figures were 
produced, which would match, was 
patented in 1845. 

The exclusive right of using these 
looms in Great Britain was purchased 
by Messrs. Francis, John Joseph Cross- 
ley, Halifax, for ten thousand pounds. 
At first they met with considerable 
difficultjnn finding men to work them, 
and it is said they only eventually 
succeeded by taking off their coats, 
tucking up their sleeves and going to 
work themselves. 


OIL CLOTH CARPET. 

Perhaps no subject has taxed in a 
greater degree the ingenuity of the in¬ 
ventor, the imagination of the artist, 
or the skill of the manufacturer, than 
floor coverings. Turn where we will, 
on every side, in the Old World or the 
New, we see at our feet ample evidence 
of the truth of this assertion. Wheth¬ 
er in the magnificent cathedrals, the 
gorgeous palaces, or the busy exchanges 
of the Old World, or in the grandiose 
hotels, the stated mansions, or the 
more unpretentious villas of the New 
World, we find everywhere abundant 
evidence of what art and luxury have 


expended in the production of floor 
coverings. 

In the old Roman and Grecian tiles, 
the later Pompeian and Renaissance, 
and the more modern Minton tiles, 
artistic excellence and manufacturing 
skill are alike admirable. 

In Indian and Persian carpets, those 
of France, Aubusson and Moquette, or 
the Wilton, Brussels, Axminster, and 
tapestries of England, not forgetting 
those later efforts of our own manu¬ 
facturers, color, texture and elegant 
design unite in the production of the 
more luxurious of all floor coverings. 

Floor oil-cloths, although of more 
recent introduction than either of the 
foregoing coverings for floors, are, for 
utility, and frequently for elegance of 
design, worthy competitors for public 
favor. 

Singular and interesting is frequently 
the origin and growth of new manu- 
factures, and in none more so than in 
that of floor oil cloth. Somewhere 
about one hundred years ago, it was 
the fashion, indeed, rather a fixed cus¬ 
tom, for the householder of u merrie 
England 11 to have the floor of the 
entrance hall of his house, which was 
ordinarily of wood, painted in large 
squares, in imitation of black and 
white tiles, such as are now used in 
our hotels, restaurants and drug stores. 

An ingenious painter finding this an 
irksome business, alike tedious for him¬ 
self and vexatious to his customers, 
conceived the idea of painting this tile 
pattern by hand on a piece of canvas 
at his workshop, and, when dry, laying 
it on the floor of the house, thus avoid¬ 
ing a loss of time and the unavoidable 
smell of paint experienced in the ordi¬ 
nary method. Having got thus far, 
this ingenious craftsman borrowed a 
set of calico printers 1 blocks, and 
attempted to print therewith, but these 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


81 


he soon found to be too delicate for the 
production of the effects desired, and 
he proceeded at once to have blocks 
made better fitted to his purpose. 

At first the design was crude and 
meaningless, but as success brought 
profit, artists of merit were employed 
in this manufacture, and by slow 
degrees an art manufacture of no ordi¬ 
nary merit was created. 

The progress of any new manufact¬ 
ure is necessarily slow, and attended 
with man} 7 " difficulties; and it was 
many years before the manufacture of 
floor oil-cloth obtained anything like 
its present excellence. 

Special kinds of canvas had to be 
woven, and looms designed by the 
manufacturer capable of weaving wider 
widths than was previously deemed 
possible ; eight yards wide cloth being 
at that time unknown as any article of 
commerce. 

The oil-cloth manufacturer stretches 
this wide fabric in a wood frame by 
means of tenter hooks, or it is some¬ 
times nailed, and it is then, as a pre¬ 
liminary step to painting, brushed over 
with weak size to stiffen it, and after¬ 
wards, when dry, it is rubbed with 
pumice-stone (which is previously wet¬ 
ted) to remove any knots or inequalities 
of surface. The paint, which is made 
much thicker than is used for painting 
wood-work, &c., is then applied with a 
trowel, such as is used by plasterers, 
until all the interstices of the fabric are 
filled, and an even surface obtained. 
Several applications are required for this 
purpose, and each coat must be dried 
by heat, before the next one is put on. 
Both sides of the cloth are treated in 
this wav, and then a final coat of thin 
paint is brushed on the side on which 
it is intended to print the pattern. 

The printing is still done by hand 
for floor cloths of eight yards wide, 


but an instrument or apparatus called 
a guage is most frequently used to ob¬ 
tain greater accuracy. These guages 
are variously made, but consist mainly 
in a long parallel bar extending the 
entire width of the table on which the 
cloth is laid during printing; and on 
this bar are indentations receiving cor¬ 
responding projections or adjustments 
on the printing blocks. It is found in 
practice that this assistance enables 
an unskilled workman to print with 
greater accuracy than a skilled one 
could do without it. 

In printing narrow width floor-cloth, 
machinery has been used for some 
years, with a great saving of time and 
labor. 

A great revolution has taken place 
during the last few years in the treat¬ 
ment of oil-cloths after printing. At 
one time it was claimed as a great 
merit by the manufacturer, that his 
goods were seasoned without heat, and 
that he sold nothing under twelve 
months old. Some innovator having 
been bold enough, commenced to dry 
his goods by a moderate heat, with 
marked success ; and in point of econ¬ 
omy and time, the result has been that 
almost every manufacturer in America 
and Europe now does the same ; but in 
place of a moderate heat being em¬ 
ployed which was a decided advantage 
over no heat at all, a temperature of 
140 to 150 degrees of Fahrenheit is 
frequently employed. This excess of 
heat is not good, and the public have 
therefore frequently to deplore the 
short durability of their floor oil-cloth. 


TO REMOVE A GLASS STOPPER. 

Take a cloth wet with warm water, 
and place around the neck of the bot¬ 
tle. The heat will expand the neck, 
and the stopper is easily removed. 








82 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


HISTORY OF HATS AND HATTING. 


The word hat is of Saxon derivation, 
being the name of a well-known piece 
of dress worn upon the head by both 
sexes, but principally by the men, as a 
covering from the hot sun of summer, 
the cold of winter, a defense from the 
blows of battle, or for fashion. Being 
the most conspicuous article of dress, 
and surmounting all the rest, it has 
often been ornamented with showy 
plumes and jewels, and with bands of 
gold, silver, etc. It is generally dis¬ 
tinguished from a cap by its having a 
brim, which a cap has not, although 
there are exceptions even to this rule 
of distinction, for there are hats that 
have no brims, and there are also caps 
that are provided with a margin. Those 
hats that are made of fur or wool have 
all been felted, and felt, strictly speak¬ 
ing, is a fabric manufactured by mat¬ 
ting the fibres together, without the 
preliminary operation of either spin¬ 
ning or of weaving. 

We find but little of hat-making 
recorded in history, and anything rela¬ 
ting to hats is extremely meager, 
although their partial use may be traced 
back to the time of ancient Greece 
amongst the Dorian tribes, probably as 
early as the age of Homer, when they 
were worn, although only by the bet¬ 
ter class of citizens when on a distant 
journey. The same custom prevailed 
among the Athenians, as is evident 
from some of the equestrian figures in 
the Elgin marbles. 

The Romans used a oonnet or cap at 
their sacrifices and festivals, but on a 
journey the hat with a brim was 
adopted. In the middle ages the bon¬ 
net or cap with a front was in use 
among the laity, while the ecclesiastics 
wore hoods or cowls. 

Pope Innocent, in the thirteenth 


century, allowed the cardinals the use 
of scarlet hats, and about the year 
1440, the use of hats by persons on a 
journey appears to have been intro¬ 
duced into France, and soon after 
became common in that country, 
whence probably it spread to the other 
European States. 

When Charles VII. of France made 
his triumphant entry into Rouen in 
1440, he wore a felted hat. 

Hatters of the present day most gen¬ 
erously ascribe the honor of the inven¬ 
tion of felting, and of its prospective 
introduction to that of hat-making, to 
the old renowned Monk St. Clement, 
who when marching at the head of his 
pilgrim army, obtained some sheep’s 
wool to Dut between the soles of his 

X 

feet and the sandals that he wore, 
which of course became matted into a 
solid piece. The old gentleman, philo¬ 
sophizing upon this circumstance, pro¬ 
mulgated the idea of its future useful¬ 
ness, and thus it is said arose the sys¬ 
tematic art of felting and of hat¬ 
making. 

However all this may be, still the 
invention of felted fabrics for the use 
of man may have been, as some assert, 
very ancient and of quite uncertain 
origin. The simplicity of its make, as 
compared with that of woven cloth, 
shows all speculative assertions to be 
rather uncertain. 

However obscure the origin may be, 
we learn that the first authentic 
account of hatters appeared in the 
middle ages, in Nuremburg in 1360, in 
France in 1380, in Bavaria in 1401, and 
in London in 1510. 

The hatting trade of the United 
States of America is noticed first in 
the representations made by the Lon¬ 
don Board of Trade to the House of 
Commons, in the year 1732, in which 
they refer to the complaints of the 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


83 


----- 

London liatters, regarding the extent 
to which their particular manufacture 
was being carried at that time in New 
York and in many of the New En¬ 
gland States. 

A look at the fashions and mode of 
dressing in ancient times causes amuse¬ 
ment. So capricious is the fancy of 
man that nothing is immutable, all is 
change, and hats have been of all con¬ 
ceivable shapes and colors, and dressed 
with the most fanciful decorations, 
plumes, jewels, silk-loops, rosettes, 
badges, gold and silver bands and loops, 
etc., etc. 

The crowns and brims having been 
in all possible stjdes from the earliest 
period, it would appear that nothing is 
left for the present and all coming 
time but the revival of what has 
already been, even to the fantastical 
peaked crown, that rose half a yard 
above the wearer’s head. 

In the fifteenth century, hats in 
Great Britian were called vanities, and 
were imported, costing twenty, thirty 
and forty English shillings apiece, 
which were large sums of money at 
that early period. 

The most extreme broad brims were 
worn about the year 1700, shortly after 
which the three-cornered cocked hat 
came in, and about this time feathers 
ceased to be worn, the lingering re¬ 
mains being left for the badge of servi¬ 
tude to the gentleman’s attendant. 
Metal bands and loops were only re¬ 
garded as proper for naval and milita¬ 
ry men of honor. 

It is a singular historical fact that 
the elegant soft hat of the Spaniard 
has remained the same from the earli¬ 
est period to the present day, while 
among all other civilized nations a 
transformation in the style of that ar¬ 
ticle has taken place. Comfort in the 
wear seems to have given place at all 


times to fancy and the demands of 
fashion. 

Queen Elizabeth’s patent grant to 
the hatters of London is still recog¬ 
nized in England, and the 23d of 
November is the hatters’ annual festi¬ 
val, that being St. Clement’s day , the 
patron of the trade. 


THE MANUFACTURE OF FINE FELT 

HATS. 

BY JOHN B. STETSON, PHILADELPHIA. 

To take the establishment in detail, 
we first visit the basement where is 
stored in original packages the first 
requisite, Fur, the majority of which 
is imported and is composed of several 
varieties and qualities. Commencing 
with the Russia Hare's Fur, taken 
from small animals, similar in appear¬ 
ance to the rabbit,, which are reared 
for their furs, domesticated and pro¬ 
tected by law in Russia. The skins 
are first shipped to Leipsic, that being 
the great market for them, and exposed 
for sale at the fairs held there for that 
purpose, being sent there from different 
sections of the country, where they 
find a ready sale from fur dealers from 
all parts of the globe. To prepare the 
Fur for hatter’s purposes, it is removed 
with a sharp knife before being ex¬ 
posed for sale. Previous to the shav¬ 
ing operation the fur is what is called 
carrotted with the application of quick¬ 
silver, to give it its felting properties ; 
without this process it would be use¬ 
less, as it would not felt. For final 
preparation it is sent to Frankfort-on- 
the-Main, where the fleeces are care¬ 
fully selected, dried and packed for 
transportation. 

English Coney is also much used. 
The fleeces of this are all taken from 
the back of the animal. In the other 
varieties include the fur from all parts 









84 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


of the body ; and on all land animals 
that from the back is the thickest and 
longest, which makes the English pre¬ 
ferable on that account. French Co¬ 
ney is also used to a great extent, but 
it is slightly inferior to both the Rus¬ 
sian and English. But that from 
which the finest and best hats are 
made is the Rocky Mountain Beaver, 
superior to all others on account of its 
fine texture and long fibre; it brings in 
price about six dollars per pound cur¬ 
rency. The South American Nutria is 
another fur greatly used, and is supe¬ 
rior to all others except the beaver. 
Some idea of the number of animals 
slaughtered to provide material for 
hats may be formed when the skins of 
one hundred Coneys make only four 
pounds of marketable fur. 

The preparation of this fur is the 
next operation, for when it is received 
from the importer it is necessary to 
thoroughly cleanse it, which operation 
is performed by a machine called a 
“picker/’ After which it is weighed, 
off in such a number of ounces as may 
be required to produce the shape and 
size of hats desired by the manufactu¬ 
rer. It is then ready for the Forming 
Machine. 

When the amount of fur for a hat 
has been deposited on the cylinder a 
damp cloth is thrown over it, on top 
of this is quickly placed a tin extin¬ 
guisher perforated with small holes to 
permit the escape of the air; next an 
attendant seizes and plunges it into a 
vat of boiling water ; by this operation 
the hat has assumed a conical, sugar- 
loaf shape about twice the dimensions 
of an ordinary hat. 

The vat of boiling water is called by 
the workmen a battery, a copper or 
Jead, tub-formed, octagon-shaped kettle, 
around which eight men work. The 
fur bodies are immersed in this hot 


bath a great number of times, till they 
have shrunken to ordinary dimensions, 
when they are taken to the drying 
room. In the large room set apart for 
the batteries we found nine plank ket¬ 
tles, and around which seventy-two 
men were at work. The kettles are 
partially filled with water, a coil of 
perforated pipe in the center of each 
connecting with the boiler to heat the 
water by steam. This is a great and 
economical improvement on the old 
style, where the water was heated by a 
separate furnace under each kettle, one 
of these furnaces consuming almost as 
much coal as it now takes to run the 
machinery of the whole establishment. 

We next visit the Drying Rooms, 
two in number, and said to be the 
most complete in the country. To 
become thoroughly dry the hats remain 
here about twelve hours. They are 
then passed to the Shaving Machine, 
which is a marvel of ingenuity, and 
the onty one, we believe, in the city 
which does the work of three -or four 
men. This operation is to shave off 
t)ie surplus hair that has worked itself 
through the fur on the surface. Thev 
are then second sized, as it is termed, 
which tightens the felt and produces a 
very smooth and even surface ; they 
are again returned to the drying room 
and thoroughly dried, when they pass 
into the hands of the stiffener, and 
from thence to the blocker in the coni¬ 
cal style, who forms them into shape 
by means of boiling water, which soft¬ 
ens and makes the body pliable, when 
they are stretched over wooden blocks 
and a cord placed tightly around the 
lower edge of the block, thus seaming 
it first, when the brim is formed by 
frequently dipping the body into boil¬ 
ing water and stretching the brim part 
into form. They are then ready for 
the Dye Kettle, a large vessel holding 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


85 


three hundred gallons of water. After 
a thorough washing they are again 
blocked into former shape and thor- 
oughly dried ; thence they pass into 
the pouncers’ hands. This operation 
was formerly done with blocks of cork 
or gutta-percha cut to conveniently fit 
the hands, and covered with a piece of 
fine emery or sand paper and rubbed 
vigorously over the surface, imparting 
to the hat a fine velvet-like finish. 

Ingenious and labor-saving machin¬ 
ery now performs this work, and one 
man and a boy can, to-day, pounce 
thirty dozen hats, where, by the old 
method, three dozen was considered a 
good day’s work. In this department, 
we noticed five of these machines. 
From the pouncers, the hat passes into 
the finishers’ hands, who block it into 
the desired shape, smooth it with hot 
irons, steam it so that it becomes soft 
and pliable, singe all the rough bristly 
hairs off, and pass it to the stitching 
room, where numerous sewing ma¬ 
chines, propelled by steam power and 
operated by skillful female operatives, 
stitch the brims and pass it to the 
trimmers, where fifty or more girls are 
busily engaged sewing linings, bands, 
etc. The last and most delicate opera¬ 
tion of all is the flanging or curling. 
The curler’s keen, artistic eye and del¬ 
icate fingers impart to it the beautiful 
well-curved and gracefully-rolled brim, 
adapting it the features of its destined 
wearer. This operation is exceedingly 
artistic, requiring, perhaps, the nicest 
discrimination of the whole process of 
hatting. 

Each department is in charge of an 
experienced foreman or woman, as the 
nature of the work may require, and 
the whole process of manufacturing 
is generally under the immediate 
supervision of the proprietor of the 
establishment. 


LEGHORN STRAW HATS. 


The Leghorn, or Italian, straw bon¬ 
nets and hats are celebrated the world 
over on account of their beautiful tex¬ 
ture, pliability, artistic make and high 
cost. 

This modern branch of industry, 
which is limited to Tuscany, was begun 
in Florence in the year 1825, and has 
gradually acquired an importance of 
from three to five millions of dollars 
for crude straw for export. 

The material used is a special variety 
of wheat cultivated for this express 
purpose, the seed of which sells at a 
much higher price than that of ordi¬ 
nary wheat. 

The straw is harvested in the moun¬ 
tainous regions of Prato, Empoli, etc., 
where the vegetation is poor and 
stunted, the soil being light and sandy. 

The fields are weeded by hand and 
worked with as much care as a garden 
plot. Fourteen bushels of seed are 
usually sown to the acre ; two bushels 
being “broadcast” at each time, and 
each sowing made at a different angle 
to the first. The effect of this is to 
produce a very close, compact growth, 
and only one elongated stem arises 
from each seed sown. 

The straw is harvested while green 
and before the ear is fully developed. 
It is gathered into small sheaves weigh¬ 
ing about half a pound each, which 
are at first placed upright in the field 
to dry, one acre bearing about three 
thousand of them. Next day these 
bundles of straw are spread out over 
rocks and pebbles in the dry bed of 
water-courses, where they are submit¬ 
ted to the action of sun and dew. At 
night they are covered up, great care 
being taken to protect them from rain. 
The straw is now bleached by means 
of sulphuric acid gas. 








86 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


The next operation consists in tak¬ 
ing off the ear below the first joint, in 
separating the lower useless portion, 
and in cutting the straw into lengths 
of four inches. Each blade of straw 
usually furnishes three such lengths. 
It is then bleached for the second time 
b} r fumes of sulphur. 

At this point the straws are sorted 
according to their various sizes — an 
operation performed by women who 
acquire, through long habit, a most 
remarkable tact in distinguishing the 
smallest variation in diameters, as may 
be inferred from the fact that in front 
of each operator are placed goblets 
numbered from 30 to 180, each of 
which is the receptacle for a special 
size of straw. 

The braids are plaited with from 
eleven to thirteen straws each. Their 
length is from 300 to 320 feet, their 
width and the quantity of straw enter¬ 
ing into them varying according to 
quality. With No. 30 straw the braid 
is coarse and wide, and weighs two 
pounds and a half. It takes, however, 
a whole month to plait a single bonnet 
from such straw. With Nos. 120 to 180 
it takes about one pound and a half 
of straw to a braid. With extra straw 
— No 180 — the braids are not more 
than 0.039 of an inch in width, and it 
takes six months 1 labor to make a suffi¬ 
ciency for a single bonnet for a lad}^. 

The braids are cleaned, exposed to 
the sun for a short time, and then sent 
to the manufacturer to be sewed into 
shape. The last operation is performed 
with the very greatest care, the stitches 
being nearly invisible and yet strong, 
and not liable to unravel during the 
pressure to which the hats are often 
subjected after being sized. 

The hats are “ ungreased,” and any 
bumps or protuberances on their sur¬ 
face are effaced by rubbing one portion 


of the tissue against another, or by 
means of friction with a dog skin. 

If an accidental tear be made, a 
piece is immediately inserted into the 
slit, and so adroitly is this done that 
the most practised eye can hardly dis¬ 
cern the imperfection. The hats or 
bonnets are then immersed into a 
warm-water bath containing a certain 
amount of acetate of lead, and are 
finally bleached for the last time by 
means of sulphureous fumes. The 
pliability of these hats is very remark¬ 
able when compared with the common 
straw fabrics made in other parts of 
the world. 

Imitation Leghorns have of late 
years been largely made, and with con¬ 
siderable success, in the Canton of 
Aargau, in Switzerland. The trade 
from this latter region amounts already 
to a value of several millions of francs 
per annum. These hats are neither as 
fine nor as strong as the genuine, but 
they sell at much lower prices. 

The manufacture of “fancy” straw 
goods is a remunerative branch of 
agricultural technology, which might 
profitably be introduced into the 
United States. Such work is well 
paid for, and is of a nature suited to 
our country women and girls, who 
could earn a living at home, without 
being obliged to leave their families. 

The seed of Tuscany wheat would 
probabty have to be imported annually 
from Italy, as it has been proved by 
careful experiments in various portions 
of Europe, that it rapidly degenerates 
in quality whenever grown, for several 
successive years, in regions far removed 
from its original place of production. 

HISTORY OF STRAW ROODS IN THE 
UNITED STATES. 

In consequence of the heavy impor¬ 
tations into the United States of bon- 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


87 


nets and hats manufactured by the 
cheap labor of Italy, which came into 
fashion about 1820, our domestic man¬ 
ufacture of straw goods was checked, 
and many females turned their atten¬ 
tion to imitating the Leghorn bonnet. 
A Miss Woodhouse, of Weathersfield, 
Conn., in April, 1821, sent to London 
a bonnet, accompanied by samples of 
the raw and bleached material, made 
of the culm of the indigenous spear, 
wire or meadow grass, a species of poa , 
and which was laid before the Society 
for the Encouragement of Arts and 
Manufactures in that city. The bon¬ 
net was admitted by dealers in London 
to be equal to the best Leghorn in 
fineness and color; and the Society 
awarded Miss Woodhouse its large 
silver medal and twenty guineas. Miss 
Lucy Burnap, of Merrimack, N. H., 
about the same time made a bonnet 
in imitation of Leghorn, which sold 
at auction for $50 in that city, 
where premiums as high as $20 were 
offered for the best specimens of straw 
bonnets. Miss Burnap, in 1823, took 
out letters patent for weaving straw 
and grass for hats and bonnets. Many 
samples of bonnets made in different 
places from New England wire grass 
or straw sold at this time for $30 to 
$50 each, which cost the females who 
made them two or three months’ labor. 
In the year last mentioned, it was 
computed that 300,000 straw bonnets 
were made in Massachusetts, and val¬ 
ued at $875,000, affording, however but 
little profit, although much of the 
braiding was done by children in fami¬ 
lies, at a small cost for wages. 

In order to allow the United States 
manufacturers to make some profit, 
the dut}^ was raised in 1824 on Leg¬ 
horn and other hats, of grass and 
straw, and braids, from 30 to 50 per 
cent, ad valorem. On the strength of 


this heavy duty, a straw plaiting 
school for poor young girls was estab¬ 
lished that year in Baltimore, but that 
city has never reached any prominence 
in the manufacture of straw goods. 
In 1832 the duty was again lowered to 
30 per cent. 


SPLIT STRAW GOODS THE INVEN¬ 
TION OF A YANKEE GIRL. 

Although the plaiting of round 
straw hats and bonnets has been car¬ 
ried on for nearly 200 years at Dun¬ 
stable, England, and still longer in 
Italy, it appears to be well authenti¬ 
cated that the straw bonnets manu¬ 
facture in the United States, and 
particularly the manufacture of split 
straw goods, was an original invention 
on the part of Betsey Metcalf, after¬ 
ward Mrs. Baker, who died about 
twenty years ago, at Dedham, Mass. 
In 1798, Miss Betsey Metcalf, at the 
age of twelve years, having seen a 
Dunstable bonnet in a store, set to 
work without any instruction or any 
opportunity of unbraiding a plait, and 
by perseverance succeeded in making 
herself a bonnet of oat straw, which 
she cut and smoothed with the scissors 
and split with her thumb nail, and 
bleached in the vapor of sulphur. An 
exact fac simile of her first bonnet, 
which was one of seven braid, with 
bottom inserted like open-work, and 
lined with pink satin, was afterward 
made by Mrs. Baker and deposited in 
the collection of the Rhode Island 
Society for the Encouragement of 
Domestic Industry. Having, in sub¬ 
sequent years, gratuitously imparted a 
knowledge of the art to the young 
women of Dedham, Wrentham, Provi¬ 
dence, and other towns, the business 
was gradually extended throughout 
that and neighboring States, until it 







88 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


has reached its present magnitude. In 
early times the straw was generally 
split and flattened with a hot iron and 
then pasted upon cloth or paper. The 
plait thus formed was cut into patterns 
and made up and trimmed according 
to the prevailing mode. 

The introduction into New England 
of a more durable style of straw plait 
made of unsplit straw, in closer imita¬ 
tion of the Scotch, has been attributed 
to a young merchant of Taunton, Mass., 
who, during a short residence in a 
Southern State, made the acquaintance 
of two English females who made up 
and sold bonnets of the celebrated 
Dunstable braid. Having observed that 
females were carefully excluded from 
their workshop, he noted all the pro¬ 
cesses from the straw to the finished 
article, and carried home the details to 
the straw-workers of his own country. 
Other improvements were subsequently 
made, particularly in the art of bleach¬ 
ing, and by the introduction of machin¬ 
ery for cutting and smoothing the 
straw, shaping and pressing the bon¬ 
nets, &c. In 1801, the business was 
commenced at Wrentham, Mass., 
which was long a principal seat of the 
manufacture, and in 1810 made about 
$100,000 worth, which was supposed 
to be nearly one-half the product of 
the county, exclusive of the value of 
hats and bonnets worn by those who 
made them. 


HOW PALM LEAF HATS ARE MADE. 

In America, the only places where 
the leaf of the palm tree is manufac¬ 
tured into wearing apparel are in 
Massachusetts. Amherst, in Hamp¬ 
shire County, Palmer, in Hampden, 
and Barre and Fitchburg, in Worces¬ 
ter, are each the site of manufactories, 
but of these the first named is the 


largest in buildings, business, and com¬ 
pleteness of work. Several of the 
others perform only a part of the 
whole course of operations necessary 
to fit the goods for market. 

From Cuba the raw leaf is shipped 
to -New London, Connecticut, in 
bunches of twenty-five leaves each, 
and the stock is unloaded and placed 
on cars which stop at the door of the 
bleaching house. As delivered, the 
leaf is from four to five feet long. This, 
standing on the stock end, is closely 
packed in the bleaching rooms, where 
it is kept sixteen days. Brimstone is 
used to whiten the leaf. The rooms 
are closed air-tight and the brimstone 
burnt in pans standing in the room. 
When bleached to the requisite white¬ 
ness, the next process the leaf under¬ 
goes is splitting. Nearly a third of all 
that passes the splitters is absolutely 
worthless for use here. Till recently 
it was thrown away ; but since paper 
manufacturers have been straightened 
for material, this palm leaf has been 
found to make good paper. Fift} r dol¬ 
lars a ton are paid for it at the paper 
mills. 

After the straw is now ready to be 
worked into hats, all the work must be 
done by hand. In all the New En¬ 
gland States, except Rhode Island, are 
agents of the firm who send the leaf 
out into the country among the wives 
and daughters of the farmers, by whom 
it is braided into hats and woven into 
webs for Shaker hoods. Large teams 
are constantly passing over the rugged 
hills, carrying material to be braided, 
or the work that has been finished. 
The number of people who find em¬ 
ployment in this business is very great. 
Little children are kept at it, for it is 
light work, and a nimble fingered girl 
of ten or twelve can earn as much in 
a day as an adult woman. The pay 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


89 


for tlie work is too small to make even 
decent wages if the worker be not of 
remarkable deftness of hand, but it is, 
with many, a work of odd moments 
which would otherwise be wasted, so 
the frugal housewife will include in 
her day’s work a “stent” of so much 
braiding to be done. In some parts of 
the country, chair bottoming is prac¬ 
ticed in the same way. Country mer¬ 
chants frequently take the leaf and 
put it out in their neighborhoods. 
They are satisfied if no profit be made 
on the braiding, for they pay for it 
from their stores, and make the in¬ 
crease of business thus secured afford 
them a fair profit. Some, however, 
make a profit at both ends, and in any 
case the worker’s recompense is a mere 
pittance. 


INTENTION OF STEREOTYPING. 

William Ged was a Scotchman, born 
about the year 1690. For some years 
he was a thriving goldsmith at Edin¬ 
burgh, and was considerably noted in 
the trade for his ingenuity. He in¬ 
vented some tools and processes which 
facilitated the exercise of his craft, and 
these he freely made known to persons 
of the same vocation. It appears that 
his attention was called to the art of 
printing b} 7 his being employed in pay¬ 
ing off the hands in an Edinburgh 
printing-house, which led him to 
reflect upon the vast amount of labor 
absorbed in the production of a book. 
In those days, a goldsmith performed 
some of the functions of a banker, and 
kept other people’s gold in his strong 
box as well as his own. It was proba- 
ply in his capacity as a banker that he 
furnished the money for the payment 
of the Scottish printers. 

It is a curious circumstance that as 
late as the year 1725, no types were 


cast in Scotland, although the business 
of printing had then attained consider¬ 
able proportions in that country. It 
seems, too, that the English printers 
then imported some of their best type 
from the continent. Young Benjamin 
Franklin, in that very year, worked as 
a journeyman printer in London, and 
he tells us that his master employed 
fifty men; but notwithstanding this 
large demand for types, the English 
printers imported some kinds from 
Holland, a country which appears to 
have had in ancient times almost a 
monopoly of the business of type¬ 
founding. 

One day in 1725, William Ged fell 
into conversation with a printer who 
spoke of the loss it was to Scotland 
not to have a type-founder nearer than 
London. The printer showed the in¬ 
genious goldsmith some single types, 
and also composed pages standing 
ready for the press, and asked him if 
there was anything so difficult in the 
manufacture of type that he could not 
invent a way of doing it. 

u I judge it more practicable/’ re¬ 
plied the goldsmith, “ for me to make 
plates from the composed pages than 
from single types.” 

“ If,” said the printer, “such a thing 
could be done, an estate might be 
made by it.” 

William Ged requested the printer 
to lend him a page of composed type 
for an experiment, which he took 
home with him and proceeded to con¬ 
sider. After several days of experi¬ 
menting, he appears to have hit upon 
the right idea. That is to say, he 
came to the conclusion that the com¬ 
posed page must be cast; but the ques¬ 
tion remained, what was the proper 
material in which to cast it; and it 
was not until two years had elapsed 
that he discovered the secret. He 









90 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


appears to have tried the harder and 
more expensive metals before attempt¬ 
ing it in a metal or compound of 
metals similar to that of the type 
itself. At the end of two years, he 
had such success that no one could dis¬ 
tinguish an impression taken from one 
of his cast plates from ordinary print. 

From this time he had the usual 
experience of an inventor. Although 
not destitute of capital, he offered a 
fourth interest in his invention to an 
Edinburgh printer, on condition of his 
advancing all the money requisite 
for establishing a stereotype foundry. 
But this printer, upon conversing with 
others of the craft, became so alarmed 
at the expensiveness of the undertak¬ 
ing that he failed to perform his part 
of the contract. The partnership 
lasted two years, during which the 
cautious Scotch printer advanced but 
twenty-two pounds; and the impa¬ 
tient Ged looked eagerly about him 
for a more enterprising partner. Thus 
four years passed away after he had 
begun to experiment. 

A London stationer, William Fenner 
by name, being by accident at Edin¬ 
burgh, heard of the invention, and 
made an offer for a share in its profits. 
He agreed to advance all the rnone} 7 
requisite ; and, four months after date, 
to have a house and materials ready in 
London suitable for Ged’s purpose. 
The inventor thought it a hard bar¬ 
gain to relinquish one-half the profits 
of so valuable and costly a conception; 
but he gladly accepted it, and proceeded 
to arrange his business for a removal to 
the metropolis. 

Arriving in London at the time ap¬ 
pointed, he was sorely disappointed to 
find that neither house nor material 
was ready for him. His delinquent 
partner, who was a plausible fellow, 
contrived to satisfy him with his ex¬ 


cuses, and even induced him to admit 
into the firm a type-founder on condi¬ 
tion of his supplying them with the 
requisite amount of type. This type¬ 
founder, however, furnished them only 
with refuse type, wholly unsuited to 
the purpose, which Ged rejected, to 
the great disgust of both his partners. 
Not discouraged, he next applied to 
the king’s printers to know if they 
would take from him stereotyped plates 
of a certain excellent t} 7 pe which the} 7 
had recently introduced. A day was 
appointed for Ged to lay before them 
in detail his plans and proposals. 

Before the day named for the inter¬ 
view, the king’s printers very naturally 
consulted upon the subject the very 
type-founder who had furnished them 
with the admirable type which had 
attracted Ged’s attention. The type¬ 
founder as naturally pooh-poohed the 
new system ; indeed, laughed it to 
scorn, and said he would give the in¬ 
ventor fifty guineas, if, in six months, 
he would make one page of the Bible 
by the new method, which would pro¬ 
duce as good an impression as could be 
obtained from good type. The inter¬ 
view, however, occurred, and probably 
Ged would have convinced the king’s 
printers of the feasibility of his plans 
but for the adverse opinion of an in¬ 
terested man. The printers told the 
inventor of the offer of fifty guineas, 
and said that the gentleman who made 
it was then in the house. 

u Being called into our company,” 
Mr. Ged relates, in a narrative dictated 
on his death-bed, after a long life of 
disappointment, “ he bragged much of 
his great skill and knowledge in all the 
parts of mechanism, and particularly 
vaunted that he and hundreds beside 
himself could make plates to as great 
perfection as I could ; which occasioned 
some heat in our conversation.” 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


81 


The dispute was settled at last by a 
kind of wager. The type-founder and 
Ged were each of them to be furnished 
with a page of the Bible in type, and 
bring back within eight days a stereo¬ 
typed plate of the same; and he who 
failed was to treat the whole company. 
An umpire was appointed—the fore¬ 
man of the king’s printing house — 
and the parties separated. The result 
may best be given in Ged’s own quaint 
language: 

u Next day about dinner time, each 
of us had a page sent us. I immedi¬ 
ately after fell to work, and by five 
o’ th’ clock that same afternoon, I had 
finished three plates from that page, 
and caused to take impressions from 
them on paper, which I and partners 
carried directly to the king’s printing 
house and showed them to said Mr. 
Gibb, the foreman, who would not 
believe but these impressions were 
taken from the type; whereupon, I 
produced one of the plates, which, he 
said, was the type soldered together, 
and sawed through. To convince him 
of his mistake, I took that plate from 
him, and broke it before his face, 
then showed him another, which made 
him cry out. He was surprised at my 
performance, and then called us to 
a bottle of wine ; when he purposed I 
should take eleven pages more, to make 
up a form, that he might see how it 
answered the sheet-way.” 

Poor Ged had been only too suc¬ 
cessful ; for the printers fancied they 
saw in this new invention the de¬ 
struction of their business ; and from 
this time there appears to have been 
a tacit understanding among them 
that Ged and his scheme were to be 
frustrated. At the expiration of the 
eight days, the type founder failed to 
keep his appointment, but had the 
honesty to send word that he could 


not perform the thing himself, neither 
u could he get one of the hundreds he 
had spoken of to undertake it.” 

The news of Ged’s invention circu¬ 
lated in London, and specimens of his 
plates were handed about, till one of 
them fell into the hands of the Earl of 
Mansfield. This nobleman caused the 
partners to be informed that the office 
of printer to the University of Cam¬ 
bridge was vacant, and that the heads 
of the University would be glad to re¬ 
ceive them, and award them the priv¬ 
ilege of printing Bibles and Prayer 
Books by the new process. This was 
joyful intelligence ; but the too easy 
and credulous Ged was not the man to 
profit by it. Indeed, the opposition 
of the London printers was so general 
and so violent, that a stronger man 
than he might have struggled against 
it in vain. He now discovered that 
his partner, Fenner, was* not possessed 
of capital, and they were obliged to 
admit a fourth partner, who afterwards 
boasted that he had joined the com¬ 
pany for the sole purpose of destroy¬ 
ing it. 

u As long as I am their letter found¬ 
er,” said he to a leading printer, u they 
shall never hurt the trade.” 

The contract, however, was obtained 
from the University, and Ged went to 
Cambridge to superintend the work. 
But he was utterly unable to contend 
against the opposition of the printers ; 
and the less, because he had not been 
bred a printer himself. His partners 
deceived and cheated him; his col¬ 
league, the type-founder, sent him 
damaged and imperfect type. He sent 
to Holland for a supply. After two 
months they arrived, but they proved 
to be so incomplete that an impression 
taken from them was a little more than 
a page of blots. 

After struggling with difficulties of 






92 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


this nature for four or five years with¬ 
out being able to complete the stereo¬ 
typed plates for one Bible or Prayer 
Book, his patience was exhausted and 
he returned to Edinburgh, a ruined 
man. The true cause of his failure 
was his extreme credulity, which was 
such as to disqualify him from success¬ 
fully dealing with men. At Edinburgh 
his friends, anxious that so valuable an 
invention should not be lost, made a 
subscription to defray the expense of 
stereotyping one volume, and Ged 
apprenticed his son to a printer in 
order that he might not be dependent 
for the necessary assistance upon a 
hostile body. By the aid of his son, 
he completed plates for a Latin Sallust, 
which was printed in the year 1736, 
and copies of it are still preserved in 
Scotland as curiosities. As he was 
unable to procure the best type, this 
Sallust is not a very fine specimen of 
stereotyping ; but it is a convincing 
proof that William Ged had mastered 
the chief difficulties of the art, and 
that in more favorable circumstances 
he would have executed work which 
even at the present day would be con¬ 
sidered creditable. 

The invention was never a source of 
profit to the inventor. By the time 
his son was a sufficiently good com¬ 
positor to render him valuable aid, and 
just as they were to embark in business 
together, he was taken sick. He died 
in 1749. 

It is a proof of the simplicity of his 
character and of his faith in the value 
of his invention, that, though he had 
offers from Holland either to go thither 
or sell his invention to Holland print¬ 
ers, he always refused. 

u I want,” said he, u to serve my own 
country, and not to hurt it, as I must 
have done by enabling them to under¬ 
sell by that advantage.” 


After Ged’s death, the secret slum¬ 
bered till about the year 1795, when it 
was revived or rediscovered in Paris, 
and soon after brought to considerable 
perfection in England. At present the 
art of stereotyping has been brought 
to the point, that our daily newspapers 
are stereotyped every night in from 
twenty to thirty-five minutes, and as 
many copies of the plates can be pro¬ 
duced as may be desired. 


THE MYSTERY OF SLEEP. 

What are the differences between 
sleeping and waking? What is the 
peculiar nature of that mysterious con¬ 
dition which we call sleep? These are 
questions long and earnestly asked but 
never answered. There is something 
about this phenomenon that seems to 
defy investigation. The distinctions 
between the sleeping and waking state 
are, save a few external differences, as 
entirely unrecognized to-day as they 
were ages ago. 

Sit by the cradle of a child and 
watch it as it sinks into quiet slumber. 
The muscles gradually relax ; the eye¬ 
lids fall; and voluntary motion ceases. 
The breathing is slower, as is also the 
action of the heart. The temperature 
of the body is slightly depressed ; and 
a state of apparent unconsciousness 
accompanies the physical changes spec¬ 
ified. That is all we can see, and vet 
it seems hard to believe these things 
are all that constitute sleep. If so, 
sleep might be accurately defined as a 
simple cessation of volition, or the 
action of the will, so that thought and 
motion of all muscles except those of 
the vital organs are impossible. But a 
little thought will show that cessation 
of will is only one of the manifesta¬ 
tions of sleep, and that the will may, 
and frequently does, only partially 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


93 


cease to act, retaining command of the 
voluntary muscles, and giving rise to 
the phenomenon of somnambulism. 
At times, also, the mind becomes active 
in sleep, and often reasons with sur¬ 
prising coherence, and dreams, more 
or less approximating to realities of 
waking hours, are produced. 

But the mystery of mysteries per¬ 
taining to sleep, is the fact that it 
renovates the system from fatigue. 
And, after all, this is no greater 
mystery than fatigue itself. What is 
fatigue? In what state of mind or 
body, or of both, does it consist, are 
questions the answers to which still 
puzzle the profoundest physiologists. 

The periodicity of the desire for 
sleep is another peculiarity which is 
still involved in mystery. Why is it 
that darkness, monotonous noises, the 
fixing of the eyes upon some station¬ 
ary object, all favor the approach of 
sleep? On all these points there is 
still no certain light. Upon respira¬ 
tion, digestion, circulation, reproduc¬ 
tion, and assimilation, some accurate 
knowledge exists, but of sleep almost 
nothing. This function, which influ¬ 
ences more or less every other, and 
which has been aptly described as a 
“ partial death from which springs 
a fresher life, 11 is apparently no less 
remote from present means of scien¬ 
tific investigation than the greatest 
mystery of all, life itself. 


THE MORGAN HORSE. 

There has been much discussion as 
to the origin of the Morgan horse, and 
yet we have very little knowledge on 
the subject that is definite. What we 
do know is, that about the beginning 
of the nineteenth century, a man by 
the name of Justin Morgan, whose life 
was somewhat checkered — turning his 


mind to farming one season, and per¬ 
haps teaching school the next — 
owned a little horse of wonderful 
nerve, a dark bay, with black legs, 
mane, and tail, standing fourteen 
hands high, and weighing about nine 
hundred and fifty pounds. At this 
time Mr. Morgan lived at Randolph, 
Vermont, and his horse had much local 
celebrity. He was a horse of great 
power for one of his inches, was fleet 
of foot, and was full of resolution. 
He was used chiefly under the saddle 
but was broken to harness. 

It was the custom to run him short 
races on the country roads, and it is 
said that he was never beaten in these 
contests. It was also the custom to 
test his strength by hitching him in 
front of heavy loads. Where the 
horse came from and what was his 
breeding are questions that are largely 
left to conjecture. There are many 
stories, but we have learned to look 
upon them in the light of tradition. 
If we could put faith in common re¬ 
port, we would discover as much 
romance in the life of the horse owned 
by Justin Morgan as Eugene Sue has 
thrown around the life of the Godol- 
phin Arabian. Where there is room 
for mystery, there is also room for 
bright fancy sketches, for rosy pictures 
of romance. The most plausible theo¬ 
ry, however, in regard to the origin of 
the horse which is known in history 
by the name of his Vermont owner, 
Justin Morgan, is that advanced by 
Mr. John Morgan, a relative of Jus¬ 
tin’s. He says that the horse was 
foaled in 1793, that his sire was True 
Briton, by the imported horse Travel¬ 
er, and that his dam was of the Wild 
Air breed. If this pedigree is correct, 
Justin Morgan was a well-bred horse. 
Of course the pedigree is disputed, but 
as for that matter, no pedigree could 







04 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


be given to the horse that would not 
be open to objection. All the facts in 
his remarkable career point to a chan¬ 
nel of pure blood, and give.the lie to 
the story that he was a mongrel, and 
of obscure origin. The life of Justin 
Morgan was a strange one. It was his 
lot to labor as few horses have labored 
— participate in the excitements of 
the race, be petted and abused, to revel 
at brief periods in the delights of the 
stud, and finally, to be neglected in his 
old age, and to die, caused by a kick in 
the flank. Old and poor as he was, he 
might have survived this injury had he 
received any care ; but he was exposed 
to the inclemenc}” of a Northern win¬ 
ter, and inflammation setting in, he 
lay down and died. It was in the 
winter of 1821, and on the farm of 
Clifford Bean, about three miles south 
of the village of Chelsea, Vt., that 
Justin Morgan breathed his last. 


WHEN AND WHERE THE STARS AND 

STRIPES WERE FIRST DISPLAYED 

ABROAD. 

Capt. G. H. Preble, of the United 
States Navy, says the New York 
Nation, is collecting material for a 
history of the American flag, and has 
succeeded, he says, in getting together 
a good many anecdotes, incidents and 
evidences concerning its origin, its 
transmigration (?), and its first appear¬ 
ance in various parts of the world. He 
informs the “ Historical Magazine ” 
that he has now no doubt that the 
stars and stripes were first displayed 
on the Thames by the ship Bedford, of 
Nantucket. The Bedford was a whaler 
which left Nantucket under a pass 
from Admiral Digby, and arrived out 
on the third of February, 1783, twelve 
days before proclamation of peace was 
made, and only a week after the Lon¬ 
don newspapers had got hold of the 


terms of the treaty. In the London 
“ Political Magazine 11 of February 7th, 
of the year above mentioned, is a pas¬ 
sage which reads as follows : - 

u The Thirteen Stripes are in the 
River. — Mr. Hammet begged leave to 
inform the House of a very recent and 
extraordinary event. There was, he 
said, at the time he was speaking, an 
American ship in the Thames with the 
thirteen stripes flying on board. This 
ship had offered to enter at the custom 
house, but the officers were at a loss 
how to behave. His motive for men¬ 
tioning the subject was that ministers 
might take such steps with the Ameri¬ 
can Commissioners as would secure free 
intercourse between this country and 
America.” 

It is a curious fact that the Maria, a 
vessel that has been named by some 
writers as a contestant for the honor 
due the Bedford, and which certainly 
was in the Thames in the course of the 
year 1783, is still afloat and in use. 
The Confederate States cruisers forced 
the old ship to take refuge under the 
Chilian flag, and she now sails from 
Talealiuana as a whaler. But the first 
display of the thirteen stripes in En¬ 
gland was not from the masthead of a 
vessel. When the king, on the 5th of 
December, 1782, in his speech from the 
throne, recognized the existence of the 
United States as a nation, Mr. Copley, 
the painter, who was among his hear¬ 
ers, went home and put the new ensign 
into the background of a portrait, that 
of Elkanah Watson — which he had 
upon his easel at the time. He had 
kept the background unfinished, reserv¬ 
ing it as a place u to represent a ship 
bearing to America the intelligence 
of the acknowledgment of American 
Independence, with the rising sun of 
the new born nation streaming from 
her gaff.” 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


95 


LENGTH OF WHALES. 

Mr. Scoresby, a very high authority 
on this subject, declares that the com¬ 
mon whale seldom exceeds seventy feet 
in length, and is much more frequently 
under sixty. Out of 322 whales, 
which he assisted personally in captur- 
ing, not one exceeded fifty-eight feet, 
and the largest which he knew the 
reported measurement to be authentic 
came up to only sixty-seven feet. Two 
specimens of the rorqual or razor-back 
whale have been observed of 105 feet 
in length. One of these was found 
floating lifeless in Davis Straits, and 
the skeleton of the other was seen in 
Columbia River, and must, tail and all 
when alive, have measured 112 feet. 
Other specimens have measured a hun¬ 
dred, and many others from eighty to 
ninety feet. One cast on shore at 
North Berwick, Scotland, and pre¬ 
served by Dr. Knox, was eighty-three 
feet in length. These instances seem 
to establish the average of these huge 
animals. But with considerable cre¬ 
dulity in earlier accounts, Cuvier, the 
eminent naturalist, says, stoutly: 
“ There is no doubt that whales have 
been seen in certain epochs and cer¬ 
tain seas upward of 300 feet long, or 
100 yards long.” 

THIMBLE MAKING. 

The manufacture of thimbles is very 
simple and interesting. Coin silver is 
mostly used, and is obtained by pur¬ 
chasing coin dollars. Hence it hap¬ 
pens that the profits of the business 
are affected instantaneously by all the 
variations in the nation’s greenback 
promises to pay. The first operation 
strikes a novice as almost wicked, for it 
is nothing else than putting a lot of 
bright silver dollars, fresh from the 
mint, into dirty crucibles, and melting 


them up into solid ingots. These are 
rolled out into the required thickness, 
and cut by a stamp into circular pieces 
of any regular size. 

A solid metal bar of the size of the 
inside of the intended thimble, moved 
by powerful machinery up and down 
in a bottomless mould of the outside of 
the same thimble, bends the circular 
discs into the thimble shape as fast as 
they can be placed under the descend¬ 
ing bar. Once in shape, the work of 
brightening, polishing and decorating 
is done upon a lathe. First, the blank 
form is fitted upon a rapidly revolving 
rod. A slight touch of a sharp chisel 
takes a thin shaving from the end, 
another does the same on the side, and 
the third rounds off the rim. 

A round steel rod, dipped in oil and 
pressed upon the surface, gives it a 
lustrous polish. Then a little revolv¬ 
ing steel wheel, whose edge is a raised 
ornament, held against the revolving 
blank, prints that ornament just out¬ 
side the rim. A second wheel prints a 
different ornament around the center, 
while a third wheel with sharp points 
makes the indentions on the lower half 
and end of the thimble. The inside is 
brightened and polished in a similar 
way, the thimble being held in a 
revolving mould. All that remains to 
be done is to boil the completed thim¬ 
bles in soap-suds to remove the oil, 
brush them up, and pack them for the 
trade. 


IRON PAPER. 


In the great exhibition of 1851, an 
American specimen of iron paper was 
exhibited. A lively competition m 
iron-rolling ensued among British iron 
manufacturers, excited by the above 
challenge from America, as to the 
thinness to which iron could be rolled 











96 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


cold. Mr. Gillett rolled sheets the aver¬ 
age thickness of which was the eight¬ 
een hundredth part of an inch. In 
other words, one thousand eight hun¬ 
dred sheets piled upon each other would 
collectively measure an inch in thick¬ 
ness, whilst the thinnest tissue paper 
to he purchased in the stationers 1 stores 
measures the twelve hundredth of an 
inch. These very thin iron sheets are 
perfectly smooth and easy to write on, 
although porous when held up to a 
good light. It may not be out of 
place, considering the great interest 
that is taken by those connected with 
that great branch of industry, the 
iron trade, to give a few curious par¬ 
ticulars as to the extent iron can he 
welded, and the thin sheets that can 
be rolled out. Brother Jonathan little 
thought what a hubbub would be 
created in the old country when from 
Pittsburgh he sent that wonderful 
letter, written on a sheet made from 
iron, which took no less than one 
thousand sheets to make an inch in 
thickness, the dimensions being eight 
inches by five and a half inches, or a 
surface of forty-four inches and weight 
sixty-nine grains. 


HOW RICH MEN BEGAN LIFE. 


Mashall 0. Roberts is the possessor 
of $4,000,000 or $5,000,000, and yet 
until he was 25, he did not have $100 
he could call his own. 

George Law at 45 was a common 
day-laborer on the docks, and at pres¬ 
ent counts his fortune at something 
like $10,000,000. 

Alexander T. Stewart first bought a 
few laces at auction, and opened his 
way to success in a dingy shop on 
Broadway, the site of the wholesale 
establishment. 

Daniel Drew, in early life, was a 


cattle driver at the munificent rate of 
75 cents a day, and he has driven him¬ 
self into an estate valued at from $25,- 
000,000 to $30,000,000. 

Robert L. and Alexander Staught, 
the noted sugar refiners, in their boy¬ 
hood sold molasses cand} r , which their 
widowed mother made, at a cent a 
stick, and to-day they are probably 
worth from $5,000,000 to $6,000,000 
each. 

Horace B. Claflin, the eminent dry 
goods merchant, worth, it is estimated, 
from $12,000,000 to $15,000,000, com¬ 
menced the world with nothing but 
energy, determination and hope, and 
see how he has invested them! 

Cornelius Vanderbilt began life with 
an old pirogue, running between Staten 
Island and New York, and carrying 
garden stuff to market. With $2,000 
or $3,000 raised from tha't source, he 
he entered upon steadily increasing 
enterprises, until he has accumulated 
$50,000,000. 


ESQUIMAUX MARRIAGE CEREMONY. 

In an account of the marriage cere¬ 
monies of the Esquimaux given by 
Dr. Hayes, he says: “The match is 
made by the parents of the couple. 
The bridegroom must go out and cap-- 
ture a polar bear, as an evidence of 
manly courage and strength. Then he 
is told he can marry, if so inclined; 
and. like most bachelors, he is generally 
so inclined. He sneaks behind the door 
of his inamorata, and when she comes 
out he pounces upon her and under¬ 
takes to bear her away to his dog- 
sledge. She kicks, bites, screams, and 
breaks away from him. He chases her, 
and the old women of the settlement 
come out with frozen strips of seal¬ 
skin and give her a thwack. After 
running the gauntlet of these old 


















CORNELIUS V AN DERB1 LT. 

















THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


97 


women, she falls down exhausted and 
surrenders. The bridegroom then 
lashes her to his sledge, and, whipping 
up his dogs, they fly over the frozen 
snow, and the wedding is consum¬ 
mated. 


HISTORY OF ADYERTXSEMEjSTS. 

Advertising bills (posters) are as old 
as streets themselves. At Athens, they 
served specially for the publication of 
the laws, and were written on rollers 
of wood which turned on a pivot; at 
Rome, they served more various pur¬ 
poses, and besides conveying a knowl¬ 
edge of the laws and decrees to citizens, 
they announced books on sale, auc¬ 
tions, etc. Booksellers were the first 
who made use of publicity, and when 
they got out a new book, they caused 
its title to be written in huge letters 
on their shop-fronts or on the columns 
appropriated to notices. These were 
the advertising columns of those days. 
In the middle ages, when very few 
knew how to read, the public crier was 
substituted, and went from place to 
place, proclaiming information, accom¬ 
panied by a sounding of trumpet. 
Francis I. was the first who decreed 
that his ordinances should be written 
on parchment in large characters, 
which parchment should be attached 
to a board. 

In the seventeenth century, bills 
came to be what they are now ; com¬ 
mercial and judicial notices were post¬ 
ed up, and booksellers employed this 
means of making their wares known. 
In 1722, a decree decided that there 
should be forty bill-stickers for the 
City of Paris. Since this period, the 
number has been constantly increas¬ 
ing, and traders, not content with 
paper and printing, have taken to 
painting, and engross entire walls. 


In Paris there are some advertisements 
which cover a house five stories high. 

Theater bills also have a very ancient 
origin, for though the Greeks did not 
use them, they were employed among 
the Romans. At first a crier sum¬ 
moned the citizens to repair to the 
games ; but bills soon after made their 
appearance, and Plautus speaks of 
some with characters more than a cubit 
long, like the giant circu--posters of 
our own time and country. In the 
middle ages, on the cessation of plays, 
play-bills of course there were not; 
and when the “ Mysteries,” or sacred 
dramas, made their appearance, they 
were on stated celebrations and festi¬ 
vals, and required no announcement, 
as every one knew beforehand the 
place, time and character of the enter¬ 
tainment. Afterwards, when the ex¬ 
tent and population of cities increased, 
criers made their appearance, and 
addressed the public very much to 
their annoyance; which our present 
system of advertising has most happily 
set aside. 


SAW MILLS. 


Wood saw mills were erected as early 
as the fourth century in Germany. 
They were driven by the water of the 
river Roer. It is said that there is now 
in Paris a manuscript of the thirteenth 
century showing a saw mill with a com¬ 
plete self-action and driven by a water¬ 
wheel. They were erected by the Span¬ 
iards in the island of Madeira in 1420, 
and in Breslau, Norway, and Rome 
some years later. A mill having a gang 
of saws and capable of sawing several 
boards at once, was in operation on the 
Danube near Ratisbon in 1575. In 
England a mill was erected in 1663 by 
a Dutchman, and was abandoned on 
account of the opposition of the popu- 










98 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


lace. In 1802 Oliver Evans, of Phila¬ 
delphia, constructed an engine for a 
boat to run between New Orleans and 
Natchez. The boat was high and dry 
on reaching the Mississippi, and could 
not be floated until a rise. The engine 
was set up in a saw mill, and sawed at 
the rate of 3,000 feet of boards per day. 
The hand sawyers, who thought their 
occupation would be gone, burned the 
mill. There are mills constructed and 
now in operation in the United States 
capable of sawing 160,000 feet of lum¬ 
ber, board measure, in twenty-four 
hours. 


HOW RAIN IS FORMED. 

To understand the philosophy of 
this phenomena, essential' to the very 
existence of plants and animals, a few 
facts derived from observation and a 
long train of experiments must be 
remembered. Were the atmosphere 
everywhere, at all times, at a uniform 
temperature, we should never have rain, 
hail, or snow. The water absorbed by 
it in evaporation from the sea and the 
earth’s surface would descend in an 
imperceptible vapor, or cease to be 
absorbed by the air when it was once 
fully saturated. The absorbing power 
of the atmosphere, and consequently 
its capability to retain humidity, is 
proportionably greater in warm than 
in cold air. The air near the surface 
of the earth is warmer than it is in the 
region of the clouds. The higher we 
ascend from the earth the colder we 
find the atmosphere. Hence the per¬ 
petual snow on very high mountains 
in the hottest climates. Now, when 
from continued evaporation the air is 
highly saturated with vapor — though 
it be invisible — if its temperature is 
suddenly reduced by cold currents 


descending from above, or rushing from 
a higher to a lower latitude, its capac¬ 
ity to retain moisture is diminished, 
clouds are formed, and the result is 
rain. Air condenses as it cools, and, 
like a sponge filled with water and 
compressed, pours out the water which 
its diminished capacity cannot hold. 
How singular, yet how simple, is such 
an admirable arrangement for watering 
the earth.— Scientific American. 


THE GREAT EASTERN. 

Below we give, for future reference 
and remembrance, the full particulars 
concerning the dimensions and struct¬ 
ure of this mammoth wonder of the 
ocean : 

Length between perpendiculars, 680 
feet. 

Length over all on upper deck, 691 ft. 

Breadth of hull, 83 feet. 

Hight from bottom of ship to top of 
iron of upper deck, 58 feet. 

Diameter of paddle-wheels, 56 feet. 

Diameter of screw-propeller, 24 feet. 

Weight of screw-propeller, 40 tons. 

Hight of principal saloons, 13 feet. 

Weight of iron in the construction 
of hull, 7,000 tons. 

Weight of ship, with machinery 
coals, cargo, and full equipment, about 
26,000 tons. 

Draught of water at that weight, 30 
feet, 6 inches. 

Weight of each of the four paddle- 
engine cylinders, about 30 tons — the 
diameter of the cylinders being 84 
inches — length of stroke 14 feet. 

The paddle-engines are over 1,200 
horse-power. 

Weight of each of the four screw- 
engine cylinders, about 20 tons — their 
diameter being 84 inches. 

The screw-engines are about 1,600 
horse-power. 








TITE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


99 


Weight of shafts for paddle- engines, 
80 tons. 

Weight of shafts for screw-engines, 
150 tons. 

Number of boilers to paddle-engines, 
four; whose weight, including fun¬ 
nels, is 408 tons. 

Number of boilers to screw-engines, 
six ; whose weight, including funnels, 
is 567 tons. 

Thickness of the plates in bulk¬ 
heads, i inch ; in the skins, f inch. 

Number of rivets used in construc¬ 
tion, 3,000,000. 

Number of masts, 6 ; of these three 
will be square-rigged, the other two 
fore-and-aft rigged. 

Quantity of canvas in the sails, 
about 9,200 yards. 

There will be two screw steamers, 
one carried on each side, abaft the 
paddle-boxes, as jolly-boats. Their 
dimensions are: Length, 100 feet; 
beam, 16 feet; measurement, 120 tons; 
horse-power, 40. 

And there will be about 20 ordi¬ 
nary boats carried in addition, with 
masts and sails complete. 


THE CHESS BOARD. 

It is related of the inventor of the 
game of chess, that on being promised 
by the king whom he first taught the 
game that he should have any reward 
he might ask for, meekly replied that 
he would be content if the king would 
give him one kernel of wheat on the 
first square, two on the second, four on 
the third, eight on the fourth, and so 
on, doubling up to the sixty-fourth 
square. The king gladly acceded to 
this seemingly modest request, and 
ordered his attendants to bring in the 
wheat — which they began to do ; but, 
to the astonishment of the monarch, it 
was found that there was not wheat 


enough, and never had been enough in 
his dominions, to pay off the crafty 
inventor. A correspondent, who has 
been “figuring on it,” says that, to 
fulfill the king’s promise, it would take 
thirty trillions, twenty-seven billions, 
ninety-seven millions, one hundred and 
eighty-four thousand, four hundred and 
eighty-five bushels of wheat — allow¬ 
ing 600,000 kernels to the bushel. This 
would cover the States of New York, 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Dela¬ 
ware all over with wheat to the depth 
of a mile and a quarter. Were the 
kernels laid together, end to end, they 
would reach two billions, three hun¬ 
dred and twenty-seven millions, eight 
hundred and ten thousand, three hun¬ 
dred and ninety-two times around the 
earth. Here is the exact number of 
kernels the chess inventor asked for — 
9,627,268,786,934,775,168! 


COLD TIMES. 

In 401 the Black sea was entirely 
frozen over. In 763, not only the 
Black Sea, but the Straits of Darda- 
nelle, were frozen over; the snow in 
some places rose fifty feet high. In 
822, the great rivers of Europe — the 
Danube, the Elba, etc., were so hard 
frozen as to bear heavy wagons for a 
month. In 860, the Adriatic was 
frozen. In 991, everything was frozen, 
the crops entirely failed, and famine 
and pestilence closed the year. In 
1067, most of the travelers in Germany 
were frozen to death on the roads. In 
1134, the Po was frozen from Cremona 
to the sea; the wine-sacks were burst, 
and the trees split, by the action of 
the frost, with immense noise. In 
1237, the Danube was frozen to the 
bottom, and remained long in that 
state. In 1317, the crops wholly failed 
in Germany ; wheat, which some years 












100 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


before sold in England at 6s. the quar¬ 
ter, rose to £2. In 1308, the crops 
failed in Scotland, and such a famine 
ensued that the poor were reduced to 
feed on grass, and many perished mis¬ 
erably in the fields. The successive 
winters of 1422-3-4 were uncommonly 
severe. In 1368, the wine distributed 
to the soldiers was cut with hatchets. 
In 1683 it was excessively cold. Most 
of the hollies were killed. Coaches 
drove along the Thames, the ice of 
which was eleven inches thick. In 
1709 occurred the cold winter; the 
frost penetrated the earth three yards 
into the ground. In 1716, booths were 
erected on the Thames. In 1744, the 
strongest ale in England, exposed to 
the air, was covered in less than fifteen 
minutes with ice an eighth of an inch 
thick. In 1809, and again in 1812, the 
winters were remarkably cold. In 
1814 there was a fair on the frozen 
Thames. 


USE FOR SAWDUST. 

A correspondent of an English ex¬ 
change thus speaks of an utilization of 
sawdust: 

“ It will probably be of some interest 
to your readers to learn that some 
exquisite specimens of work, vieing 
with the finest carvings, have been 
turned out by the cabinet-makers of 
the Faubourg St. Antoine, Paris. It 
appears that by the simultaneous appli¬ 
cation of great pressure and heat, these 
ingenious workmen have succeeded in 
causing the particles of sawdust to 
agglutinate, so that if compressed in a 
mould the result is a solid mass, of any 
desired shape, presenting a brilliant 
surface, and endowed with a durability 
and beauty of appearance not found in 
ebony, rosewood, or mahogany. This 
product is known as hois dure. An¬ 


other very peculiar body, which approx¬ 
imates more to boxwood in appearance, 
is formed by the admixture of glue, 
phosphate of lime, alum and sawdust, 
a kind of dough being formed with 
boiling water, which admits of being 
pressed into moulds. This compound 
also takes a very high polish. An 
application of somewhat similar nature 
has been made in Canada, by J. Kent 
Griffin, who took out a patent for 
making a composition for pavements, 
blocks for buildings, etc., from sawdust 
or disintegrated wood, mixed with sili¬ 
cate of soda and asphalt, and then 
heated.” 


DOLLS’ SHOES. 

The manufacture of dolls 1 shoes, 
although partaking more of the toy 
trade than of regular shoe-making, has 
grown so rapidly of late years, that a 
few facts concerning it will, no doubt, 
be of interest. Quite a business is 
done in these little articles by some of 
the dealers in findings and small wares 
for the shoe-trade in some of the large 
cities. They are retailed in most of 
the toy and fancy-goods stores, and 
about holiday time are in active de¬ 
mand. 

"W ithin the past six or eight years, 
this business has grown into consider¬ 
able importance, and there are several 
manufacturers who devote their whole 
time to this department, employing 
quite a number of operatives. They 
make use of scraps of morocco, etc., 
from shoe manufactories and book¬ 
binders, which formerly were thrown 
away. At first the shoes were of the 
simplest character, and as far as any 
special shape was concerned, were mere 
semblances of shoes. But within two 
or three years, there has been much im¬ 
provement made in the style and mode 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


101 


of manufacture — the fashions of the 
day are followed closely, and the pets 
of the household must have their dolls 
dressed in every respect similar to 
older people, and, therefore, several 
pairs ot shoes must be provided for 
the several dresses — slippers, ties, 
walking-boots, shoes, etc., and in va¬ 
rious colors. They must be made to 
button, tie or lace, as the case may be. 

One of the most popular makers of 
these articles makes 50,000 pairs per 
annum, using about 20,000 feet of 
morocco and sheep, mostly of scraps, 
besides cutting considerable whole 
stock, of all the fashionable colors — 
yellow, bronze, blue, red, pink and 
cuir — which sell to finding dealers at 
$1.50 to $4.50 per dozen. There are 
two grades of shoes, one for common 
dolls, and the other for wax dolls — the 
latter of which are made with great 
care, and are really a very neat and 
pretty article, some of them being 
large enough for a flesh-and-blood 
baby of tender months. 


THE HISTORY OF ZERO. 

u Zero,” on the common thermome¬ 
ter, like the fanciful names of the con¬ 
stellations, is an instance of the way 
wise men's errors are made immortal 
by becoming popular. It may be 
worth while to say that the word itself 
(zero) comes to us through the Spanish 
from the Arabic, and means empty, 
hence nothing. In expression like 
u 90 deg. Falir.” the abbreviation Falir., 
stands for Fahrenheit, a Prussian mer¬ 
chant of Dantzic, on the shores of the 
Baltic sea. His full name was Gabriel 
Daniel Fahrenheit. 

From a bov he was a ciose observer 
•/ 

of nature, and when only nineteen 
years old, in the remarkable cold win¬ 
ter of 1709, he experimented by put¬ 


ting snow and salt together and no¬ 
ticed that it produced a degree of cold 
equal to the coldest day of that year. 
As that day was the coldest the oldest 
inhabitant could remember, Gabriel 
was the more struck with the coinci¬ 
dence of his little scientific discovery, 
and hastily concluded that he had 
found the lowest degree of tempera¬ 
ture known in the world, either natu¬ 
ral or artificial. He called that degree 
zero, and constructed a thermometer, 
or rude weather glass, with a scale 
graduated up from the zero to boiling 
point, which he numbered 212, and 
the freezing point 32 — because, as 
he thought, mercury contracted the 
thirty-second of its volume on being 
cooled down from the temperature of 
freezing water to zero ; and expanded 
180th on being heated from the freez¬ 
ing to the boiling point. 

Time showed that this arrangement, 
instead of being truly scientific, was as 
arbitrary as the division of the Bible 
into verses and chapters, and that these 
two points no more represented the 
real extremes of temperature than 
“from Dan to Beersheba” expressed 
the exact extremes of Palestine. 

But Fahrenheit’s thermometer had 
been widely adopted with its own in¬ 
convenient scale, and none thought of 
any better until his name became an 
authority, for Fahrenheit finally aban¬ 
doned trade and gave himself up to 
science. Then habit made people cling 
to the established scale, as habit makes 
the English cling to the old system of 
cumbrous fractional money. 

Our nation began to use Fahrenheit’s 
thermometer about the middle of the 
last century, or not far from the time 
when old style was exchanged for new 
style in the writing of dates. 

The three countries which use Fah¬ 
renheit are Holland, England and 








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T1IE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


America. Russia and Germany use 
Reaumer's thermometer, in which the 
boiling point is counted ISO degrees 
above freezing point. France uses the 
centigrade thermometer, so called be¬ 
cause it marks the boiling point 100 
degrees from freezing point. 

On many accounts the centigrade 
system is the best, and the triumph of 
convenience will be attained when zero 
is made the freezing point, and when 
the boiling point is put 100 or 1,000 
degrees from it, and all the sub-divi¬ 
sions are fixed decimally. 

If Fahrenheit had done this at first, 
or even if he had made it in one of his 
many improvements after the public 
adopted his error, the luck of opportu¬ 
nity which was really his, would have 
secured to his invention the patronage 
of the world. 


WHAT IS STEEL? 

Ralph Crooker, of Boston, and well 
known throughout the New England 
States as a rolling-mill man, asks and 
answers the above question in a neat 
circular, thus : 

“ Steel. — A combination, or an 
alloy, of iron, that will forge, harden 
and temper.' 1 

There are various kinds of steel — 
such as carbon cast steel, tungsten cast 
steel, chrome cast steel, cyanogen cast 
steel, and titanium cast steel; and 
several other metals have been alloyed 
with iron to make steel. 

There is also blistered steel, which 
is made from malleable bar iron by a 
process called cementation; German 
steel, which is made directly from the 
ore, and sometimes from pig iron, in 
the Catalan forge ; and steel which is 
made from other processes. 

The line between cast iron and steel 
is — when it is capable of being forged, 


it is steel; and when it will not forge, 
it is cast iron. And the line between 
malleable iron and steel is — when it 
will harden and temper, it is steel; and 
when it will not harden and temper, 
it is malleable iron. 

Cast steel will harden slightly when 
it contains from 0.25 per cent, to 0.30 
per cent, of carbon, and ceases to be 
capable of forging if it contains much 
more than 1.75 per cent, of carbon. 


SLEEPING BEDS. 

During all ages, from the earliest 
times, men have displa}^ed their inven¬ 
tion in designing beds which should 
gratify their natural love for comfort, 
for elegance, and for luxury. In the 
pre-historic times the dwellers in the 
caves most probably followed the sug¬ 
gestion given them by the animals 
which they drove out from their rocky 
dens, in this early stage of the “ strug¬ 
gle for existence,” and made their beds 
of leaves. From this condition to pro¬ 
viding skins for the coverings of their 
couches was a great advance, and with 
their increasing ability to dominate 
their surrounding conditions, and pro¬ 
vide the materials for gratifying their 
natural as well as artificial wants, this 
step was but the first in a long course 
of invention and improvement applied 
to beds. 

Among the Romans and the Greeks, 
as well as other nations of antiquity, 
such an appliance as a mattress was 
unknown. They made their beds upon 
couches of wood, which were covered 
with skins, furs, woolen and other 
stuffs. Their luxury in beds consisted 
only in using more expensive cover¬ 
ings, replacing a sheep’s skin by a 
tiger’s, or substituting for a rough 
woolen blanket one of finer texture, 
or a shawl of silk embroidered in gold 









TIIE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


103 


or silver thread. These improvements, 
or those consisting in replacing the 
wooden bench which formed their sup¬ 
port with one of bronze, or even of 
gold or silver, was really only a display 
of greater wealth, but could not be 
considered in these days an advance 
towards securing the advantages of 
a comfortable, luxurious and healthy 
bed. 

In the early period of modern his¬ 
tory, beds were almost universally, in 
Europe, nothing but bundles of straw. 
As late in England as the times of 
Queen Elizabeth, when no carpets were 
used, and the floor was strewn with 
rushes, the beds were hardly anything 
better, and a wooden bench, or any 
rude framework which lifted the bed 
above the floor, was a luxury. Eras¬ 
mus, in his letters, describes the social 
condition of the people during the 
reign of Henry VIII., and was dis¬ 
gusted at the state of the floors. The 
rushes, he says, were so seldom changed, 
and became so damp that the feet were 
constantly kept wet, and thence colds 
and consumption were quite common. 
In the dining rooms, he speaks of the 
filth collected on the floor among the 
rushes; the bits of meat and bones 
thrown to the dogs, who fought around 
the guests’ legs for them ; the beer and 
wine emptied upon the floor ; the slices 
of bread, used as plates for eating their 
meat on, and then thrown aside ; alto¬ 
gether giving us no very high concep¬ 
tion of the neatness and fine breeding 
of the time. 

From Delaroche’s fine picture of 
u The Death of Queen Elizabeth,” an 
accurate idea can be gained of the beds 
of royalty at this period, and conse¬ 
quently those of the common people 
can be imagined. By a careful study 
of the times, and from all the contem¬ 
porary evidence bearing upon this 


point, Delaroche was enabled to repro¬ 
duce the scene with a truthful accuracy 
of detail. The queen is reposing upon 
a bed formed by spreading cloths upon 
the floor. She is covered with richly 
embroidered spreads of velvet, bordered 
with golden fringe. The moment 
chosen is when she is upbraiding the 
Countess of Nottingham for keeping 
back the ring Essex had sent to his 
royal mistress just before his execution. 
The queen herself is*gorgeously attired, 
as was her constant custom, but the 
comparison between the brilliant cov¬ 
erings of her bed and its position, one 
which now would be considered as in 
the dirt, affords an admirable picture of 
the partial civilization of the times, 
with its splendor of display, and its 
want of the simplest decencies of the 
present. 


STRENGTH OF METALS, WOODS, Etc. 

It is a remarkable provision of nature 
that iron which is most abundantly 
yielded by the earth, is also the strong¬ 
est of all known substances. Made 
into the best steel, a rod one-fourth of 
an inch in diameter will sustain 9,000 
pounds before breaking; made into 
soft steel, a rod of the same dimensions 
will sustain 7,000 pounds; into iron 
wire, 6,000; wrought, 4,000; inferior 
bar-iron, 2,000, and cast iron, 1,000 to 
3,000. A bar of copper-wire of the 
same size will sustain 3,000 pounds ; ot 
silver, 2,000 ; of gold, 2,500 ; tin, 300 ; 
cast zinc, 160 ; cast lead, 50 ; and milled 
lead, 200. Of wood, a bar of box and 
locust of equal size will sustain 1,200 
pounds; of toughest ash, 1,000 pounds; 
elm, 800 ; beech, cedar, white oak and 
pitch pine, 600; chestnut and maple, 
900; and poplar, 400. Wood which 
will bear a heavy weight for a minute 
or two will break with two-thirds the 







104 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


force acting a long time. A rod of 
iron is about ten times as strong as a 
hemp cord. A rope an inch in diame¬ 
ter will bear about two and a half tons, 
but in practice it is not safe to subject 
it to a strain of more than about a ton. 
Decrease the rope in diameter one-lialf, 
and its strength will decrease three- 
fourths. Thus a rope half an inch in 
diameter will sustain one-fourth as 
much as a rope an inch in diameter. 


THE FIRST PLANING MACHINE. 


It is an interesting question as to 
where the first planing-machine was 
made; according to the London Iron 
Trade Exchange . it was built in the 
Holland street works of John Rennie 
the elder. “In March, 1814, (and we 
copy from an original memorandum 
book of the late George Rennie,) the 
following plan was adopted for chip¬ 
ping the cast-iron sides of a new lathe: 
The sides are placed close together, 
with their faces upward; two planks 
of elm, one on each side, are bolted 
with their edges truly placed end up¬ 
ward ; upon the edges of the planks 
run four wheels on axles, which sup¬ 
port a truck of oak. To the truck is 
fixed a slide-rest, to which is attached 
a cutting tool; the truck is well loaded 
with weights, and pulled along the 
surface of the elm planks by means of 
a crab and chain. Thus the tool 
planes the iron lathe-beds straight.” 
This was, in fact, the first planing- 
machine, crude and rude as it was, and 
from it Whiteworth, to whom the 
original apparatus was shown, subse¬ 
quently made a self-acting machine. 
We all know how important a tool it 
has become, and the wondrous saving 
it effects in the manufacture of nearly 
every kind of machinery. 


THE FIRST UMBRELLA. 

It is generally stated that it is to 
Jonas Hanway, the well-known phi¬ 
lanthropist, that we are indebted for 
the valuable example of moral courage 
in first carrying an umbrella in the 
streets of London. It is difficult now 
to conceive the amount of persecution 
which this strange proceeding entailed 
upon this unfortunate philanthropist, 
whose object was, doubtless, less the 
protection of his own person than that 
of showing his countrymen how they 
might avoid those continual drench- 
ings to which they had so long sub¬ 
mitted. The hackney coachmen and 
sedan chairmen were the first to cry 
out against the threatened innovation, 
declaring that they were ruined if it 
came into fashion. When they began 
to be carried, even a gentleman accom¬ 
panied by a lady, under the shelter of 
the new-fangled rain-protector, was 
hooted as he passed along, while a 
gentleman alone, carrying one, was 
certain to be met with cries of 
“ Frenchman ! Frenchman ! why don’t 
you call a coach ?” and other more 
offensive salutations. 


CAMPHOR WATER AS A GERMINATOR. 

Many years ago it was discovered 
and recorded that water saturated with 
camphor has a remarkable effect upon 
the germination of seeds. A Berlin 
professor has lately established the fact 
that a solution of camphor stimulates 
plants as alcohol does animals. He 
took seeds of various species of beans 
and pear, of varying ages, and put 
some between sheets of paper wet with 
water and others between sheets dipped 
in a solution of camphor. In many 
cases, the seeds moistened simply with 
water did not swell at all; while in 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION 


105 


every instance those subjected to the 
camphor solution speedily germinated. 
A long series of experiments showed 
the unvarying result of a singular 
awakening of dormant vitalism and 
a wonderful quickening of growth 
by the application of camphor. The 
effect was lasting, the plants stimu¬ 
lated by the drug continuing to de¬ 
velop with uncommon vigor. On the 
other hand, when powdered camphor 
was mixed with the soil, the effect 
was deleterious. These experiments 
afford a hint to farmers and garden¬ 
ers for the treatment of seeds and 
grain. 


REFINED CAMPHOR. 

Crude camphor, as brought to this 
country, is refined here by being in¬ 
troduced together with quicklime into 
cast-iron vessels, which serve as re¬ 
torts, over which are placed covers of 
sheet-iron connected with the lower 
vessels by a small aperture. 

A number of these stills are placed 
in a large sand bath, and, after the 
smelting of the camphor within them, 
kept at a uniform temperature, that 
the process may go on quietly. The 
quicklime serves to retain the moist¬ 
ure that otherwise would interfere 
with the condensation of the pure 
camphor. This takes place under the 
shelf upon which the cone stands ; the 
vapor, when in excess, passing into the 
loosely affixed cones of sheet-iron, and 
great care being taken to keep the hole 
open. 

A great deal of attention and experi¬ 
ence are requisite to successfully re¬ 
fine camphor, hut the process is now 
well understood in this country as well 
as in Europe, and what is sold in this 
market is refined here, and is of satis¬ 
factory quality and appearance. 


SHIRTS. 

The word “shirt” is derived from the 
Anglo-Saxon sceort, short, that proba¬ 
bly from the Latin curtus , having a 
similar meaning; so that shirt is 
literally a short garment. It was 
called by our Saxon ancestors indis¬ 
criminately sherte or camise (chemise)i 
and the undermost garments of both 
sexes were then of similar shape and 
materials. It began to be decorated 
with embroidery under the Normans 
when worn by the nobility. In the 
reign of Henry VII. decorated shirts 
are named, but in that of Henry VIII., 
paintings and drawings of Holbein 
furnish us with actual representations 

of luxurious embroidered shirts. 

A shirt of silk is mentioned in the 

romance of Li beau disconus (14th 
century), and a shirt of fine holland in 
the 25th Coventry Mystery. It is a 
practice in some countries for the bride 
to present her intended husband with 
an embroidered wedding Shirt. In the 
old Scotch song of “Gilderoy,” we 
have an instance: 

“For Gilderoy, that luve of mine, 

Gude faith I freely bought, 

A wedding sark of Holland fine, 

Wi’ silken flowers wrought. 


FIRE. 

According to Pliny, fire was a long 
time unknown to some of the ancient 
Egyptians, and when a celebrated as¬ 
tronomer showed it to them, they were 
absolutely in raptures. The Persians, 
Phoenicians, Greeks, and several other 
nations, acknowledged that their an¬ 
cestors were once without the use of 
fire, and the Chinese confess the same 
of their progenitors. Pompanion, 
Mola, Plutarch, and other ancient 
writers speak of nations which, at the 
time when they wrote, knew not the 











106 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


use of fire, or had just learned it. 
Facts of the same kind are also at¬ 
tested by modern nations. The inhab¬ 
itants of the Marian Islands, which 
were discovered in 1551, had no idea of 
fire. Never was astonishment greater 
than theirs when they saw it on the 
desert in one of their little islands. 
At first they thought it was some kind 
of animal that fixed to and Fed upon 
wood. 


THE YANILLA BEAN. 


The vanilla bean grows on a vine 
which, although growing from the 
root, is a parasite, as it will grow even 
cut from the root, for it takes its sub¬ 
stance from the tree around which it 
clings by means of its thousands of 
fine tendrils. Like all parasites, there 
are trees which are particularly adapted 
to its support. They are planted about 
ten feet apart, in rows, at the foot of 
small trees which are left in clearing 
the lands. They begin to bear the 
third year, and, in favorable years, give 
from $400 to $1,000 per acre. No culti¬ 
vation is needed but to cut down the 
grass and weeds; no plowing or spad¬ 
ing being necessary. The bean is often 
gathered in September and October, 
but as it is not yet ripe, the vanilla 
is of inferior quality, and sells for a 
low price ; but if left till the end of 
November or December it comes to 
perfection. It is then gathered care¬ 
fully and spread out in the sun on 
mats, if the weather be favorable, but if 
otherwise it is placed in ovens, which 
process changes the color from a pale 
green to a deep rich brownish or pur¬ 
ple, and at the same time develop the 
oil which, on pressure, exudes from the 
bean. They are then packed in blank¬ 
ets while warm, and put into large tin 
cases to go through a sweating process, 


again put in the sun and again in the 
blankets, until they attain the proper 
color. They are then placed in a dry 
room upon shelves made of some open 
material, so that the air can circulate 
around and under them. This evapo¬ 
rates all the watery part. In 1870, in 
New York, the value was $60 to $70 
per 1,000 beans ; in 1875, they were 
worth from $130 to $180 per 1,000; 
sueh has been the increase in the con¬ 
sumption, without a proportionate in¬ 
crease in the cultivation. The people 
will work only about one hundred days 
in the year, which provides them with 
all they need, and as they will do no 
more there is very little increase in 
the production of any thing. When 
the beans are assorted they are tied up 
neatly in bunches of fifty beans each, 
and packed in cases of tin holding 
from 2,000 to 3,000. These tin cases 
are lined with tinfoil, and a ticket put 
on the lid giving (he quality, size and 
quantity. Some five or six of these 
tin cases are put into a neatly made 
cedar chest, which is sometimes lined 
with zinc and hermetically sealed so 
as to prevent moisture from getting 
to the vanilla in transporting, which 
would ruin it. These cedar cases are 
then sewed in mats, and these are cov¬ 
ered with a coarse bagging to avoid 
the dangers of transportation on mules. 
In this manner all the Mexican vanilla 
goes to places of sale in Europe and 
the United States, where it is worth 
from $9 to $20 per pound, the thou¬ 
sand beans weighing from nine to ten 
pounds. Formerly France was the 
great market for vanilla, but the enter¬ 
prise of some of our American mer¬ 
chants has diverted the trade to New 
York, which is now the great depot of 
vanilla and parties from Europe come 
to New York to buy .—Report of De¬ 
partment of Agriculture. 







107 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


THE DOME OF THE CAPITAL. 

The dome of the Capital at Wash¬ 
ington is the most ambitious structure 
in America. It is 180 feet higher than 
the Washington Monument at Balti¬ 
more, 68 feet higher than Bunker Hill, 
and 22 feet higher than Trinity church 
spire, New York. It is the only con¬ 
siderable dome of iron in the world. 
It is a vast hollow sphere of iron 
weighing 8,000,300 pounds. How 
much is that ? More than 4,000 tons, 
or about the weight of 70,000 full- 
grown people, or about equal to a 
thousand laden coal cars, which hold¬ 
ing four tons apiece, would reach two 
miles and a half. Directly over head 
is a male figure in bronze, “ America,” 
weighing 13,985 pounds. The pressure 
of the iron dome upon its piers, and 
pillars is 14,477 pounds to the square 
foot. St Peter’s presses nearly 20,000 
pounds more to the square foot, and 
St. Genevieve, at Paris, 65,000 pounds 
more. It would require 755,280 pounds 
pressure to the square foot to crush 
the supports of the dome. The cost 
was about $1,000,000 


MEDICAL PROPERTIES OF EGGS. 


The white of an egg has proved of 
late the most efficacious remedy for 
burns. Seven or eight successive ap¬ 
plications of this substance soothe 
pain, and effectually exclude the burn 
from the air. This simple remed} T 
seems to be preferable to colodion or 
even cotton. Extraordinary stories 
are told of the healing properties of a 
new oil which is easily made from the 
yolk of hen’s eggs. The eggs are first 
boiled hard ; and the yolks are then 
removed, crushed and placed over a 
fire, where they are carefully stirred 
until the whole substance is just on 


the point of catching fire, when the 
oil separates and may be poured off. 
One yolk will yield nearly two tea¬ 
spoonfuls of oil. It is in general use 
among colonists of South Russia as a 
means of curing cuts, bruises and 
scratches. 


BLACK RAIN. 

There are on record several incon- 
testible instances of black rain having 
fallen, among which the following may 
be mentioned: Professor Barker, in 
April, 1849, laid before the Royal Dub¬ 
lin Society some observations on a 
shower of black rain which fell around 
Carlow and Kilkenny, and extended 
over an area of about 400 square miles. 
He presented to the Society a specimen 
which had been forwarded to him, the 
person who had collected it mentioning 
that at the time that it fell it was uni¬ 
formly black, and resembled ordinary 
writing ink. Dr. Barker found, how¬ 
ever, that after allowing it to stand for 
a short period, the black coloring mat¬ 
ter separated from the water with 
which it had been mixed, rendering the 
color of the rain much lighter than at 
first. This shower was preceded by 
such darkness that it was impossible to 
read except by candle-light. After this 
darkness had continued for some time, 
a hail-storm occurred, attended with 
vivid lightning, but without thunder, 
and when this subsided the black rain 
fell. On examination of the rain just 
after it had fallen, it was found to have 
an extremely foetid smell, and a very 
disagreeable taste ; it left a stain upon 
some clothes on which it had fallen, 
and cattle refused to drink it. A simi¬ 
lar shower occurred near Northampton 
in July of the following year, and was 
thus described by the Rev. J. T. Tryon, 
of the Bulwick Rectory. It fell about 












108 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


three or four o’clock in the afternoon, 
rendering quite black the people’s 
clothes on the hedges, and those spread 
on the grass to dry ; also giving to the 
water caught in tubs and vessels from 
slated and tiled houses, almost the 
color of ink. Some rain which had 
fallen in the morning had been per¬ 
fectly clear, and the black rain appeared 
to fall from one particular cloud. u It 
caused,” said Mr. Tryon, “ a black-lead 
froth at the top of my tub, so that I 
myself collected three or four bowls of 
such froth therefrom. Three days 
after, two bo}^s loading my wagons 
with clover were rendered as black as 
chimney sweepers, from the black sedi¬ 
ment the rain had left thereon. My 
shepherd’s inexpressibles, up to the 
knees, were rendered of the like color 
after shepherding his sheep, so that it 
appears the shower was not confined 
to this parish.” 


HOW TO TAKE CARE OF CHINA AND 
GLASSWARE. 

In average households few things 
suffer more from ill usage than porce¬ 
lain and glass, especially the finer 
kinds of such ware. A few practical 
suggestions on the best method of 
cleansing and preserving these fragile 
materials may be welcome. 

One of the most important things 
is to “season” glass and china to sud¬ 
den changes of temperature, so that 
they will remain sound after exposure 
to sadden heat and cold. This is best 
done by placing the articles in cold 
water, which must be brought gradu¬ 
ally to the boiling point, and then 
allowed to cool slowly, taking several 
hours to do it. The commoner the 
materials, the more care in this respect 
is required. The very best glass and 
china is always well-seasoned, or “ an¬ 


nealed,” as the manufacturers say, 
before it is sold. If the wares are 
properly seasoned in this way, they 
may be washed in boiling water with¬ 
out fear of fracture, except in frosty 
weather, when, even with the best an¬ 
nealed wares, care must be taken not 
to place them in hot water. All china 
that has any gilding upon it must, on 
no account, be rubbed with a cloth of 
any kind, but merely rinsed, first in 
hot and afterward in cold water, and 
then left to drain till dry. If the gild¬ 
ing is very dull and requires polishing, 
it may now and then be rubbed with 
a soft wash leather and a little dry 
whiting; but this operation must not 
be repeated more than once a year, 
otherwise the gold will most certainly 
be rubbed off and the china spoiled. 
When the plates, etc., are put away 
in the china closet, pieces of paper 
should be placed between them to 
prevent scratches on the glaze or 
painting, as the bottom of all ware 
has little particles of sand adhering to 
it, picked up from the oven wherein it 
was glazed. The china closet should 
be in a dry condition, as a damp closet 
will soon tarnish the gilding of the 
best crockery. 

In a common dinner service it is a 
great evil to make the plates too hot, 
as it invariably cracks the glass on the 
surface, if not the plate itself. We all 
know the result — it comes apart; 
u nobody broke it,” “ it was cracked 
before,” or “ cracked a long time ago.” 
The fact is, that when the glass is 
injured, every time the u things ” are 
washed the water gets to the interior, 
swells the porous clay, and makes the 
whole fabric rotten. In this condition 
they will also absorb grease ; and when 
exposed to further heat, the grease 
makes the dishes brown and discolored. 
If an old, ill-used dish be made very 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


109 


hot indeed, a teaspoonful of fat will be 
seen to exude from the minute fissures 
upon the surface. These latter remarks 
apply more particularly to common 
wares. 

As a rule, warm water and a soft 
cloth are all that is required to keep 
glass in a good condition ; but water 
bottles and wine decanters, in order to 
keep them bright, must be rinsed out 
with a little muriatic acid, which is the 
best substance for removing the u fur ” 
that collects in them. This acid is 
far better than asLes, sand or shot; for 
the ashes and sand scratch the glass, 
and if any shot is left by accident, the 
lead is poisonous. Richly cut glass 
must be cleansed and polished with a 
soft brush, upon which a very little 
fine chalk or whiting is put; by this 
means the lustre and brilliancy are 
preserved.— Boston Journal of Chem¬ 
istry. 


KID SKINS. 

In certain parts of Europe the rear¬ 
ing of kids for the sale of their skins 
is an important business ; those which 
command the highest prices, and are 
regarded as superior to all other, being 
the French, called in the market peaux 
nationales. By some the fine quality 
of these skins is attributed to a peculiar 
virtue in the wild vines upon which 
the young ones feed in the pasturage 
which they frequent; this, however, 
being a popular error, as their value is 
simply the result of the care with 
which the little animals are reared 
during their life of four or five weeks. 
They are not allowed to roam at large, 
as such a license would imperil the 
eveness of their skins, which would 
become scratched by rubbing against 
stones, or passing through hedges. 
They are. besides, deprived of all food 


except milk, as eating grass would 
tend to render their skins coarse. Con¬ 
sequently, they are kept under a wicket 
coop, from which, at regular hours, 
they are led to suckle the mother, and 
this continues until they are killed, at 
the end of four or five weeks. The 
younger they are killed the thinner 
the skin ; but, of course, the smaller 
they are the less valuable, too, especially 
when they are only large enough to 
allow of single-buttoned gloves, while 
the demand is all for two, three and 
four-buttoned gloves. By rearing the 
kids in the manner just described, 
larger skins are obtained, which are as 
fine and delicate as those of younger 
ones of other countries where they 
roam at liberty. As France produces 
the best skins, so Paris excels all places 
in France where gloves are manufact¬ 
ured, and an adept in the trade can 
select a Paris-made glove from among 
hundreds made elsewhere. 


KID (LLOVES. 

A French correspondent writes : 

u The largest manufacturer for this 
country is Alexandre, who supplies one 
house in New York with between sixty 
and seventy thousand dozen pairs of 
kid gloves per annum. His principal 
factory for cutting is in Paris. Mr. 
Muller, who stamps his given name of 
Alexandre upon the gloves, when first 
known to Mr. Stewart was in humble 
circumstances, needing capital to en¬ 
large his industry ; but his merit being 
discovered, the want was supplied, and 
an enormous establishment is the re¬ 
sult. Mr. Muller owns a hotel in 
Paris, for a winter residence, and pos¬ 
sesses La Grange, with its sixty bed¬ 
rooms and fifteen hundred acres of 
land, distinguished in former years as 
the home of Lafayette. His hospital- 









110 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ity corresponds with these important 
dwellings. He manufactures his own 
champagne, claret, brandy, etc., each of 
a fine quality. 

u On a visit to me some years ago, 
he gave me the history of this manu¬ 
facture. The opinion was then quite 
common that rat skins were used, 
which he disposed of very summarily. 

4 Besides other objections,’ said he, ‘ it 
is enough to mention that they would 
be much too short for the hand.’ In 
order to purchase kid skins, he sends 
out his agents as early as February to 
Italy, and they follow the mountain 
ranges, keeping pace with the opening 
of Spring, until they reach to the 
plains of the Baltic. Fields which 
will carry sheep, are not used for the 
goat in flocks. The goat is driven up 
to nearly the snow line of mountains, 
to feed on the tender branches of 
shrubs and trees, and they are tended 
and milked by a class which is not 
seen in this country. 

“In walking up the Alps, I have 
found these interesting flocks. The 
horns of the animal supply handles for 
knives, its hair is used for cloth, its 
milk for cheese, its flesh for food — that 
of the young kid being excellent — and 
the skin is displayed on fair hands in 
all civilized countries. It will be years 
before this entire industry will be in¬ 
troduced into the United States. 

“ The compensation for sewing is 
too small to enlist the regular and per¬ 
manent industry of women, and it is 
resorted to somewhat as knitting by 
hand is among us, at intervals of ordi¬ 
nary labor. The movement of the 
needle is guided by the notches of a 
steel clamp held by the sewer, who 
presently arrives at the experience 
which permits the work to be done 
while conversation is engaging part of 
the attention, and indeed while the eye 


is directed to a different quarter. It is 
owing to this facility that a slight 
reward for the labor is exacted. The 
sewers are distributed all over France, 
and receive the material, cut out with 
precision, and put up in bundles of a 
dozen pairs. 

“ In order to conduct the distribu¬ 
tion of the gloves here with advantage, 
their form, color and shade, are fixed 
upon here. Colors which were in de¬ 
mand a year ago, are rejected now, and 
others have taken their place. The 
closest attention to the probable varia¬ 
tions in the public taste must be 
observed. You would be surprised to 
see the sample-book shades furnished 
for the purpose of preparing orders. 
They represent every tint which our 
knowledge of nature and art supplies.” 


NEW USE FOR ALCOHOL. 

A new and wonderful application of 
alcohol has recently been made in 
the treatment of tumors and cancer. 
Schwalbe, of Weinbeim, reports one 
hundred cases of various forms ot 
indolent glandular swellings treated 
successfully by the subcutaneous in¬ 
jection of the tincture of iodine. 
Latterly he has used injections of 
simple alcohol in fifty similar cases, 
and has found the results equally 
favorable, and the time required for 
a cure no greater; and he, therefore, 
concludes that the alcohol is the 
essential remedial agent. He explains 
its curative action as follows: It 
establishes a state of chronic inflam¬ 
mation of the connective tissue, 
causing it to contract by degrees, and 
thus pressure is brought upon the 
vessels and the lymphatics are oblit¬ 
erated. These effects, and the conse¬ 
quent hardening of the connective 
tissue, he proposes to utilize in the 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Ill 


treatment of other tumors, and he 
reports the cure of fatty tumors by 
the use of such injections, to which 
some ether was added in order to dis¬ 
solve the fat. He finds, however, the 
most important application of his 
plan in the treatment of cancer by 
preventing its extension to the neigh¬ 
boring tissues and lymphatic gland. 
The tumor is first to be isolated, as it 
were, by causing the connective tissue 
on all sides of it to become shriveled. 
Then the contractive connective tissue, 
approaching the growth itself, presses 
upon it, cuts off its blood supply, and 
so causes it to disappear by atrophy. 
Lymphatic glands which are already 
affected are to be similarly treated. 
Schwalbe, with Dr. Hasse, claims to 
have cured three cases ot cancer of 
the breast in this way. 


WEIGHT OF THE SEXES. 

On the average, boys at birth weigh 
a little more, and girls a little less than 
six pounds and a half. For the first 
twelve years the two sexes continue 
♦ nearly equal in weight, but beyond 
that time males have a decided pre¬ 
ponderance. Thus the young men of 
twenty average 143 pounds each, while 
the young women of twenty average 
120 pounds. Men reach heaviest bulk 
at about thirty-five, when they average 
about 152 pounds; then they slowly 
increase in weight until fifty, when 
their average is about 168 pounds. 
Taking men and women together, their 
weight at full growth averages about 
twenty times as heavy as they were on 
the first day of existence. Men range 
from 108 to 220 pounds and women 
from 88 to 207. The actual weight of 
human nature, taking the average of 
ages and conditions — nobles, clergy, 
printers, maidens, boys, girls and babies, 


all included — is veiy nearly 100 pounds. 
These figures are given in avoirdupois 
weight; but the advocates of the supe¬ 
riority of women might make a nice 
point by introducing the rule that 
women be weighed by Troy weight — 
like other jewels — and men by avoir¬ 
dupois. The figures would then stand : 
young men of twenty 143 pounds each ; 
young women of twenty 160 pounds 
each, and so on. 


THE BREMEN ROSE-WEIN. 

A writer gives an estimate of the 
value of the famous Bremen rose-wein, 
which, in the year 1624, cost $165 per 
cask, and is now two hundred and 
fifty -two years old. Calculating the 
original outlay at ten per cent, com¬ 
pound interest, he states that in 1865 
the value of each cask was $231,883,- 
905,000, or nearly ninety times the 
present debt of the United States, 
while each bottle was worth $161,039,- 
499, very nearly the sum realized from 
duties on imports in the United States 
last year. Each glass was worth $20,- 
000,000, and each drop $20,000. We 
should think this wine had been kept 
almost too long, and the owners had 
better “ realize 11 soon, unless they want 
to lose on it. 


EMBROIDERING BY MACHINERY. 

In the early history of almost every 
manufacture there is nearly always an 
amount of almost romantic interest 
that no outsiders would expect from 
seeing its humdrum or every day 
working. This is the case with the 
recent and comparative new art of 
embroidering by machinery. In 1827-8 
a certain M. Heymann, of Mulhouse, 
introduced into Switzerland a machine 
for producing sewing or long-stitcb 












112 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


embroidery work. A St. Gall mer¬ 
chant advanced sufficient funds for 
making ten or a dozen such machines ; 
and after the usual changes and im¬ 
provements, very fair results were 
obtained. Forty-odd years, ago, how¬ 
ever, an aversion to labor-saving 
machinery, even amongst compara¬ 
tively well educated people, was one of 
the economical fallacies of the time. 
It was difficult to obtain labor, and 
many people conspired to impede the 
employment of the machines and their 
products. In the end, the St. Gall cap¬ 
italist lost all his fortune, becoming a 
bankrupt, while the machinery was 
taken to pieces and thrown into a 
heap. 

Not less than twenty years later a 
nephew of this same Swiss merchant 
conceived the idea of sorting these 
pieces, and erecting them according to 
the dim memories of his childhood. 
After considerable trouble he at last 
succeeded. With much shrewdness he 
kept his undertaking secret, sending 
the embroidered work to foreign mar¬ 
kets as hand-made embroidery. By 
his ability and good fortune he rapidly 
prospered, gradually increasing the 
number of his machines, but keeping 
their construction secret, as patents are 
not granted in Switzerland. At last 
his success attracted attention. Others 
wished to embark in such a prosperous 
trade ; the difficulty consisted in pro¬ 
curing machinery. The successful 
manufacturer was naturally not de¬ 
sirous of competition; and, in the 
meantime, the machine shop where 
the first machines had been made for 
M. Ileymann had passed into other 
hands, the new people knowing noth¬ 
ing about it. At last, after turning 
their drawing office upside down, some 
of the detail drawings were fished up ; 
and with the aid of these the construc¬ 


tion of a machine was begun. Slowly 
and with much difficulty, the missing 
parts were bit by bit added, and the 
first machine was satisfactorily got to 
work. This proved a fortune for the 
machine shop. Orders for these ma¬ 
chines flowed in, the factory was 
enlarged, but still could not keep pace 
with the demand; other shops sprang 
up for making them, and also got full 
j of work. It is now estimated that 
there are about five thousand machines 
of the kind in actual work for the St. 
Gall market, making nothing but 
“handles” and “ entredeux,” while many 
hundreds more of such machines are 
erected every year. On an average 
each machine works three hundred or 
more needles, which will give an idea 
of the power of production. This 
branch of manufacture has, in fact, 
now grown up into one of the main 
staples of St. Gall. Chain-stitch em¬ 
broidery, estimated to be five or six 
times as important, is still almost ex¬ 
clusively made by hand; and manufact¬ 
urers are eagerly waiting for a machine 
as good as that for long-stitch. The 
brilliant prospect has tempted many 
inventors; some have succeeded in 
making little machines with only one 
needle, but this is not a commercial 
machine. 


SILK. 

Raw silk is said to have been made 
by a people or China called Seres, 150, 
B. C. It was first brought from India 
A. . ., 371, and a pound of it at that 
time was worth a pound of gold. The 
manufacture >of raw silk was intro¬ 
duced into durope from India by some 
monk in 550. Silk dresses were first 
worn in 1455. The eggs of the silk 
worm were first brought into Europe 
in 527. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


113 


SCISSORS. 

The Scissors of Atropos were made 
like sheep-shears, the bowsprings at the 
junction of the bladed handles. Fosbroke 
says that forfices were thus made and 
were common among the Britons and 
Anglo-Saxons. The blades with loops 
for the fingers and pivoted together by 
rivet is of later date. Isidore in the 
fifth century refers to them as the tools 
of the barber and tailor. In an ancient 
tomb lately opened in Egypt were found 
a pair of bronze scissors lying in a lady’s 
work-basket. The handles were formed 
in the shape of a sphinx. The basket con¬ 
tained needles, pins, combs and many 
articles of the toilet and work-basket. 

EXERCISE IN PRONUNCIATION. 

The following rather curious piece 
of composition was recently placed up¬ 
on the blackboard at a teacher’s insti¬ 
tute, and a prize of a Webster’s diction¬ 
ary offered to any person who could 
read and pronounce every word correct¬ 
ly. The book was not carried off, 
however, and 12 was the lowest number 
of mistakes in pronunciation made: 
“A sacrilegious son of Belial, who suf¬ 
fered from bronchitis, having exhausted 
his finances, in order to make good the 
deficit, resolved to ally himself to a 
comely, lenient and docile young lady 
of the Malay or Caucasian race. He 
accordingly purchased a calliope and 
coral necklace of a chameleon hue, and 
secured a suite of rooms at a principal 
hotel, he engaged the head-waiter as a 
coajutor. He then dispatched a letter 
of the most unexceptional caligraphy 
extant, inviting the young lady to a 
matinee. She revolted at the idea, re¬ 
fused to consider herself sacrificable to 
his desires, and sent a polite note of 


refusal; on receiving which he procured 
a carbine and bowie knife, said that he 
would not now forge letters hymeneal 
with the queen, went to an isolated 
spot, severed his jugular vein, and dis¬ 
charged the contents of the carbine 
into his abdomen. The debris were re¬ 
moved by the coroner. 


SULPHURIC ACID. 

One of the most important products 
of chemical science is sulphuric acid, 
or oil of vitriol. It is a very impor¬ 
tant element in connection with the 
development of leading industries, and 
by various combinations forms soda, 
hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, and 
super-phosphates for fertilizing pur¬ 
poses. It is also a primary constituent 
in substances used for making soap, 
glass, paper, and for bleaching and 
dyeing. It is by the aid of sulphuric 
acid that we clean plates and gild 
metals, purif} 7 oils and manufacture 
candles. 

It was not until within the last 
century that the benefits of this sour 
corrosive liquid were fairly appreciated. 
One hundred years since many of the 
great manufacturing industries of the 
present day were only in their infanc} 7 , 
and the quantity of sulphuric acid 
consumed in the whole of Europe at 
that time did not reach over about 
twenty thousand tons, the supply 
being obtained b} 7 burning, at the top 
of large leaden chambers, the native 
sulphur obtained from the volcanic 
ground of Sicily and one or two other 
regions of like character. Now the 
magnitude of the world’s enterprises 
demands a corresponding consumption 
of this potent agent of civilization, 
and the comforts and advantages en¬ 
joyed by all people attest the efficacy 













114 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


of this staple chemical product. It is 
stated on good authority that the 
quantity of sulphuric acid annually 
used in Europe is more than eight 
hundred thousand tons, and two 
hundred and fifty millions of kilo¬ 
grammes of sulphur are employed in 
its manufacture. Sulphuric acid is 
also largely manufactured in Brooklyn 
from sulphur, but of late years iron 
pyrites have been substituted to a 
considerable extent. The strength 
and purity of tlie two preparations 
are about the same, and their effect¬ 
iveness in each case about as thor¬ 
ough. Sulphuric acid made from 
sulphur is an equivalent of sulphur 
combined with three equivalents of 
oxygen. 

Experiments were made in France 
as early as 1793 to manufacture sul¬ 
phuric acid from iron pyrites, but 
without marked success. After re¬ 
peated attempts of this character by 
several chemists in various countries, 
it was reserved for the efforts of M. 
M. Perret, to be crowned with signal 
success in 1830, and since that time 
the knowledge of this manufacture 
extended throughout the civilized 
world. In Europe almost the entire 
production of sulphuric acid is made 
from pyrites, and very little is manu¬ 
factured from the volcanic or common 
sulphur. The difference in cheapness 
of material is decidedly in favor of the 
former mineral. 


“ SIR-LOIN.” 


The sirloin of beef is said to owe 
its name to King Charles the Second, 
who dining upon a loin of beef, and 
being pleased with it, asked the name 
of the joint. On being told, he said : 
u For its merit, then, I will knight it, and 
henceforth it shall be called Sir-Loin.” 


THE HUGE TREES OF THE WORLD. 


One-third of the land surface of our 
globe is covered with forests. The 
largest tree in the world is situated 
near Muscoli, at the foot of Mount 
iEtna, and is called “ The Chestnut 
Tree of a Hundred Horses,*' believed 
to be the oldest tree in the world. Its 
name arose from the report that Queen 
Jane of Aragon, with her principal 
nobility, took refuge from a violent 
storm under its branches. At one 
time it was supposed that it consisted 
of a clump of several trees united. 
But on digging away the earth, the 
root was found entire, and at no great 
depth. Five enormous branches rise 
from the trunk 204 feet in circumfer¬ 
ence, the intervals between which are 
of various extent, one of them being 
sufficient to allow the carriages to 
drive abreast. A fig tree stands on 
the northerly bank of the river John¬ 
stone, in East Australia, latitude 27 
degrees, longitude 151 degrees, near 
Brisbane, measuring three feet from 
the ground one hundred and fifty feet, 
where it sends off great branches, 
eighty feet in circumference. In 
Buoyoudercli, near Constantinople, is a 
plane tree measuring one hundred and 
forty-nine feet in circumference. The 
“ Giant Redwood Tree,” in Nevada, 
latitude 38 degrees, longitude 129 de¬ 
grees, is one hundred and nineteen 
feet in circumference. There are 
thirteen other trees standing near it, 
measures from seventy-two to ninety- 
six feet in circumference. In Oaxaca 
there is a cypress tree measuring one 
hundred and seventeen feet in circum¬ 
ference. The u Grizzly Giant,” the 
monarch of the Mariposa Grove, meas¬ 
uring ninety-two feet in circumference. 
The Tulare Fresno Forest, so called 
from its being situated in those two 












THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


115 


counties (California), extending sev¬ 
enty miles in length, with a width in 
some places of ten miles, consists 
mainly of big trees, with a multitude 
of smaller ones, measuring from six to 
one hundred feet in circumference. 
In 1852, John Dowd discovered in Cal¬ 
averas county, Cal., a grove of one hun¬ 
dred and three trees, covering a space 
of fifty acres, measuring from seventy 
to ninety feet in circumference. There 
is an elm tree in the south of England 
which measures sixty-one feet in cir¬ 
cumference. In Norfolkshire there is 
a famous lime tree measuring forty- 
eight feet in circumference. On the 
Hubbard farm, in North Andover, 
stands a magnificent elm tree, measur¬ 
ing twenty-seven feet in circumference. 
A barbeny hush has taken root in a 
notch thirty feet from the ground, 
which can be recollected by some of 
the oldest inhabitants during their 
boyhood. At Hingham, near the Old 
Colony House, is an elm tree measur¬ 
ing twenty-six feet in circumference. 
The Washington elm, in Cambridge, 
measures twenty-five feet, and the big 
elm on Boston Common measures 
twenty-four feet in circumference. 


A CHEAP ELECTRIC BATTERY. 

The smallest, cheapest and most 
effectual battery is the one by Dr. 
Golding Bird, of England. Procure 
the bowls of six tobacco pipes, and 
stop up the holes left by breaking off 
the stems with sealing wax ; next get 
six small tumblers of about an inch in 
height, such as children use for toys ; 
place in each a cylinder of amalga¬ 
mated zinc, put a pipe bowl in each 
cylinder, and in each pipe bowl a thin 
slip of platinum foil, one inch and a 
quarter long and half an inch wide, 
connected at the zinc cylinder by a 


platinum wire; fill the pipe bowls 
with nitric acid, the tumblers with 
dilute sulphuric acid, and an energetic 
current will he evolved, capable of 
decomposing water, igniting wire, char¬ 
coal points, etc. 


IMPORTANT DISCOVERIES. 

The Stereoscope was invented by 
Prof. Wheatstone, and first described 
by him in 1838. It was only a year 
after this that M. Daguerre made 
known his discovery in Paris; and 
almost at the same time Mr. Fox 
Talbot sent his communication to the 
Royal Society, giving an account of 
his method of obtaining pictures on 
paper by the action of light. Iodine 
was discovered in 1811, bromine in 
1826, chloroform in 1831, gun-cotton, 
from which collodion is made, in 1846, 
the electro-plating process about the 
same time with photography; u all 
things, great and small, working to¬ 
gether to produce what seemed at first 
as delightful but as fabulous as Alad¬ 
din’s ring, which is now as little sug¬ 
gestive of surprise as our daily bread.” 


PIANO WOODS. 

In an ordinary piano there are fifteen 
kinds of wood, namely : Pine, maple, 
spruce, cherry, walnut, whitewood, 
apple, basswood, birch, mahogany, 
ebony, holly, cedar, beech and rose¬ 
wood, from Honduras, Ceylon, England 
and South America. There are used 
of the metals, iron, steel, brass, white 
metal, gun metal and lead. There are 
in an instrument of seven and a half 
octaves two hundred and fourteen 
strings, making a total length of seven 
hundred and eighty-seven feet. Such 
a piano will weigh from six hundred to 
one thousand pounds. 










116 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


INVENTION OF PUNCTUATION. 


Punctuation is peculiar to the modern 
languages of Europe. It was wholly 
unknown to the Greeks and Romans, 
and the languages of the East, al¬ 
though they have certain marks and 
signs to indicate tones, have no regular 
system of punctuation. The Romans 
and Greeks also, it is true, had certain 
points, which like those of the lang¬ 
uages of the East, were confined to the 
delivery and pronunciation of words; 
but the pauses were indicated by break¬ 
ing up the written matter into lines or 
paragraphs, not by marks resembling 
those in the modern system of punctu¬ 
ation. Hence, in the responses of the 
ancient oracles, which were generally 
written down by the priests and deliv¬ 
ered to the inquirers, an ambiguity— 
doubtless intentional—which the want 
of punctuation caused, saved the credit 
of the oracle, whether the accepted 
event was favorable or unfavorable. As 
an instance ma}' be cited that remark¬ 
able response which was given on a 
a well known occasion, when the ora¬ 
cle was consulted with regard to the 
success of a military expedition : “Ibis 
et redibis nunquam peribis in hello.” 

Written, as it was, without being 
pointed, it might be translated either, 
“Thou shalt go, and shalt never return, 
“Thou shalt perish in battle, 11 or, 
“Thou shalt go and shalt return, thou 
shalt never perish in battle.” The cor¬ 
rect translation depends on the placing 
of a comma after the word nunqnam 
or after redibis. The invention of the 
modern system of punctuation has been 
attributed to the Alexandrian gramma¬ 
rian, Aristophanes, after whom it was 
improved by succeeding grammarians; 
but it was so entirely lost in the time 
of Charlemagne that he found it neces¬ 
sary to have it restored by Wamfried 


and Alcuin. It consisted at first of 
only one point, used in three ways, and 
sometimes of a stroke formed in several 
ways. But as no particular rules 
were followed in the use of these signs, 
punctuation was exceedingly uncertain 
until the fifteenth century, when the 
learned Venetian pointers, the Mantuii, 
increased the number of signs and es¬ 
tablished some fixed rules for their ap¬ 
plication. These were so generally 
adopted that we consider the Mantuii 
as the inventors of the present method 
of punctuation; and although modern 
grammarians have introduced some im¬ 
provements, nothing but a few partic¬ 
ular rules have been added since their 

time._ 

AN INCH OF RAIN. 

Few people can form a definite idea 
of what is involved in the expression, 
An inch of rain. It may aid such to 
follow this calculation: An acre is equal 
to 6,272,640 square inches; an inch 
deep of water on this area will be as 
many cubic inches of water, which at 
227,274 to the gallon, is 22,622.5 gall¬ 
ons. This quantity weighs 226,225 
pounds, or 100.93 tons. One-liundredth 
of an inch (0.01) is equal to one ton 
per acre. 


MANUFACTURE OF CLAY TOBACCO 

PIPES. 

The clay of which these are made is 
obtained in Devonshire, in large lumps, 
which are purified by dissolving in 
water in large pits, where the solution 
is well stirred up, by which the stones 
and coarse matter are deposited; the 
clayey solution, is then poured off 
into another, where it subsides, and 
deposits the clay. The water, when 
clear, is drawn off, and the clay at the 
bottom is left sufficiently dry for use. 











THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


117 


Thus prepared, the clay is spread on a 
board, and beaten with an iron bar to 
temper and mix it ; then it is divided 
into pieces of the proper' size to form 
a tobacco pipe ; each of these pieces is 
rolled under the hand into a long roll, 
with a bulb at one end to form the 
bowl ; and in this state they are laid 
up in parcels for a day or two, until 
they become sufficiently dry for press¬ 
ing, which is the next process, and 
is conducted in the following manner : 
The roll of clay is put between two 
iron moulds, each of which is im¬ 
pressed with the figure of one-half of 
the pipe; before these are brought 
together a piece of wire of the size of 
the bore is inserted midway between 
them ; they are then forced together 
in a press by means of a screw upon a 
bench. A lever is next depressed by 
which a tool enters the bulb at the 
end, and compresses it into the form 
i)f a bowl; and the wire in the pipe is 
afterward thrust backwards and for¬ 
wards to carry the tube perfectly 
through into the bowl. The press is 
now opened by turning back the 
screw, and the mould taken out. A 
knife is next thrust into a cleft of the 
mould left for the purpose, to cut the 
end of the bowl smooth and flat; the 
wire is carefully withdrawn, and the 
pipe taken out of the mould. The 
pipes when so far completed, are laid 
by two or three days properly ar¬ 
ranged, to let the air have access to 
all their parts, till they become stiff, 
when they are dressed with scrapers 
to take off the impressions of the 
joints of the moulds ; they are after¬ 
wards smoothed and polished with 
a piece of hard wood. 

The next process is that of baking 
or burning; and this is performed in 
a furnace of peculiar construction. It 
is built within a cylinder of brick¬ 


work, having a dome at top, and a 
chimney rising from it to a consider¬ 
able higlit, to promote the draft. 
Within this is a lining of fire-brick, 
having a fire-place at the bottom of it. 
The pot which contains the pipes is 
formed of broken pieces of pipes 
cemented together by fresh clay, and 
hardened by burning ; it has a number 
of vertical flues surrounding it, con¬ 
ducting the flame from the fire-grate 
up to the dome, and through a hole in 
the dome into the chimney. Within 
the pot several projecting rings are 
made; and upon these the bowls of 
the pipes are supported, the ends 
resting upon circular pieces of pottery, 
which stand on small loose pillars 
rising up in the center. By this 
arrangement a small pot or crucible 
can be made to contain fifty gross of 
pipes without the risk of damaging 
any of them. The pipes are put into 
the pot at one side, when the crucible 
is open ; but when filled, this orifice 
is made up with broken pipes and 
fresh clay. At first the fire is but 
gentle, but it is increased by degrees 
to the proper temperature, and so 
continued for seven or eight hours, 
when it is damped and suffered to cool 
gradually; and, when cold, the pipes 
are taken out ready for sale. 


HOW COUNTERFEIT NOTES ARE 
MADE. 

A party of men, say from three to a 
dozen, get together and hold frequent 
meetings, and act according to a plan 
laid down. One or two will find out 
some copper plate printer in the employ 
of the bank note company — in fact, 
all such printers are known by the 
party. These men will then manage 
to meet one of the printers in the 
evening, get acquainted, drink, and 








118 


THE PEOPLES' LIBRARY OF. INFORMATION. 


have a good time generally with him, 
and so proceed tor a few evenings. 
Then they offer him from $50 to $100 
to procure a certain kind of impres¬ 
sion. This impression is made in this 
tvise: The printer will take the im¬ 
pression on tin foil from the plate 
from which he is printing, which can 
be done in a moment. Thus you see 
every line and the size is obtained cor¬ 
rectly. From this tin foil an electro- 
type plate is made. They then get 
some plate printer who can be found 
about the city, have a good time with 
him, and engage him at twenty dol¬ 
lars a day to do the printing. By this 
plan, thousands of copies are struck 
off that defy detection except in the 
quality of the paper, which will differ 
from the genuine. The place of man¬ 
ufacture is generally at some distance 
from New York, like Staten Island, 
Flatbush, or some similar locality in 
that city. It is a strange fact, in 
every case where a party of this kind 
exists, that every member lacks confi¬ 
dence in his associates. Every move 
made by one is narrowly watched by 
others of the party. It would be 
death to an informant or spy that did 
not look well to himself. 


METHOD OF TAKING IMPRESSIONS 
OF MEDALS OR COINS. 


The following is a method of taking 
impressions of medals or coins with 
isinglass. Take an ounce of isinglass, 
heat it in a mortar; then pick it into 
small pieces, put them into a half-pint 
phial, and then fill it up with a spirit- 
ous liquor (common brandy or Geneva 
will do); put a cork into the phial, 
with a notch cut in one side of it for 
a passage of air, and then set it by the 
fire three or four hours, shaking it 
often in that time ; (the heat should 


be great enough to keep it near the 
boiling ‘point all the while). The 
isinglass will then be sufficiently dis¬ 
solved, and the whole must be put into 
a cloth and strained off; it must 
finally be put into a clean phial, well 
corked, and kept for use. 

When it is wanted for use, take the 
glue and set it by the fire, and it will 
soon liquify, or become fluid ; then, 
having made the medal clean, and 
placed it quite level, pour on as much 
of the glue as will cover it completely 
over and lie without running off. It 
must then be let stand to dry (which, 
in the Summer time and dry weather, 
will be but one or two days); when 
quite diy, it must be taken off by en¬ 
tering the point of a penknife under 
one side, and it w T ill rise off the medal 
in clear, transparent and perfect re¬ 
semblance of the whole, and even the 
most minute parts of it. 


STRADIVARIUS AND HIS VIOLINS. 

In the year 1644 there was Dorn in 
the Italian town of Cremona a child 
whose name is famous as that of the 
greatest maker of violins that ever 
lived. Little is known about Antonius 
Stradivarius except that he reached the 
great age of ninety-three, and worked 
at his art until shortly before his death. 
In fact, there is one of his instruments 
in existence bearing a certificate in his 
own hand-writing with the date 1736, 
when he was ninety-two years old. 
He was a pupil of Nicolas Amati, a 
member of a family that for nearly 
two hundred years had been distin¬ 
guished for skill in the manufacture 
of violins, and had made the name of 
Cremona synonymous with the highest 
excellence in their profession. 

Several instruments made by Andreas 
Amati, the first maker of the name, for 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


119 


Charles IX. of France, were long kept 
in the Chapel Royal at Versailles, but 
they disappeared during the stormy 
days of the great Revolution, and only 
two of them were ever recovered. One 
of these, a violincello with a tone of 
extraordinary power and richness, was 
sold at auction at London in May, 1827. 
It bore the maker’s name and residence 
in Latin, and the catalogue said that 
the proprietor received a document, 
when he purchased it, stating that it 
was presented to Charles IX. by Pope 
Pius Y. 

Skill in the manufacture of violins 
was hereditary in the Amatis, for the 
talent of Anpreas, which was shared 
by his brother Nicolas, was possessed 
also by his sons, Antonins and Hie¬ 
ronymus, who made some famous ones 
for Henry IY. of France. But the 
most celebrated maker in the family 
was Nicholas Amati, the son of Hie¬ 
ronymus, who, while following the 
models of his ancestors, produced bet¬ 
ter proportioned and more finished 
instruments. Those of the large or 
grand pattern are equal in power and 
sweetness of tone to most of the vio¬ 
lins of Stradivarius. The genius of 
the Amatis declined with Nicolas, for 
his son, who is considered the last of 
his family, was inferior to his predeces¬ 
sors, and made but few instruments. 
As late as 178-, however, a descendant 
of the celebrated makers worked in an 
establishment at Orleans, where his 
violins were much admired. His var¬ 
nish of rich golden amber, so charac¬ 
teristic of the Amatis, attracted much 
attention, but he refused to disclose its 
nature, saying that it was a family 
secret, and he left Orleans rather than 
divulge it. 

Contemporary with Andreas, the eld¬ 
est Amati, was Gasper di Salo, a still 
more noted maker, who worked at 


Brescia from about 1560 to 1610, or a 
little later. His productions, though 
not highly finished are remarkable for 
their clear and vigorous tone. Drago- 
netti, the celebrated double-bass play¬ 
er, used one of his instruments, and 
among the violins of the great makers 
owned by Ole Bull, his favorite is by 
this master. 

Stradivarius was the worthy pupil 
of the greatest of the Amatis, and his 
old Cremonas have brought the most 
extravagant prices. There is, however, 
considerable difference in their quality, 
the best having been made between 
1700 and 1725, his hand retaining its 
cunning till past fourscore. After that 
time his instruments were less perfect, 
and it is probable that his two sons, 
who were among his assistants, did 
more of the work than formerly, 
though still under his directions. At 
his death he left several unfinished in¬ 
struments, which were completed by 
his sons, who placed his ticket in them, 
so that some doubt exists as to the 
authenticity of those made during his 
closing years. There are undoubtedly 
numerous counterfeits bearing his 
name, for although he made a good 
many instruments during his long life, 
genuine ones are scarce. The taste 
and skill displayed in his model have 
never been surpassed. The wood 
united beauty with great capability for 
conducting sound; the tone of the 
strings were of remarkable excellence, 
and the varnish was of a beautiful 
warm reddish or yellowish color, the 
secret of which is lost. 

The increase in the value of instru¬ 
ments made by Stradivarius since his 
death is very remarkable. His usual 
price for a violin was about eighty 
francs. A similar instrument to-day 
would bring from eight hundred to 
two thousand dollars, according to its 






120 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


state of preservation, while his violin- 
cellos command a much larger sum. 
The highest price ever paid for a 
violin, according to Sandy’s and 
Forester’s works on the subject, was 
given for one made by Stradivarius, 
which was sold in 1856 for more 
than its weight in gold. One of the 
finest instruments — which derived an 
additional value from its having be¬ 
longed to the celebrated violionist, 
Yiotti — was sold at auction in Paris in 
1824 for thirty-eight hundred francs. 
These prices furnish a striking com¬ 
mentary on the experience of the elder 
Cervetto, who, before he became a mu¬ 
sician, was an Italian merchant, and 
had dealt with Stradivarius himself in 
musical instruments. Some of the pro¬ 
ductions of the master he carried to 
England, but being unable to obtain 
as much as five pounds for a violin- 
cello, the disappointed dealer sent 
them back as a bad speculation. A 
century passed away, and at an auc¬ 
tion in London in 1827 of the musical 
instruments of Sir William Curtis, the 
well known connoisseur, a violincello 
of Stradivarius was put up at two 
hundred guineas, and bought in for 
two hundred and thirty-five. It bore 
the date 1684, and was said to have 
been made for a Corfiote nobleman, 
who placed it in a chest with cotton, 
where it remained for more than a cen¬ 
tury. 


VIOLIN AND ZITHER MAKERS. 

In the quaint little Bavarian village 
of Mittenwald nearly 8,000 violins 
are made every year for export to all 
parts of the world. The manufacture 
has flourished there for the last 200 
years. The inhabitants work in their 
own homes, as will be seen by the 
sketch. The workmen are about 200 


in number, and receive very scanty pay 
for their labor. As short a time. back 
as eighty years, the only agent they had 
was an old man, who went about from 
place to place with a box on his back 
containing specimens of their work. 
Most of them only do the fiddle work 
in Winter, as they are generally occu¬ 
pied in the Summer in getting in their 
little bit of corn, hay, etc. A boy can 
learn the trade without any pecuniary 
assistance on the part of his parents, 
as the Bavarian government started a 
school for violin making some years 
ago. There is also a drawing school 
and a music school, free to all who 
choose to join. They make some won¬ 
derful imitations of violins, such as 
those of Antonius Stradivarius, Cre¬ 
mona, “faciebat Anno 16—Gui- 
seppe Guarnerius, ;i ►J* fecit Cremona 
16—, I. H. S.;* 1 Nicolaus Arnalus 
Cremonien, Hieronimy, fili Antoni 16, 
and many more. These are sold in 
Mittenwald as imitations, but are often 
passed off by others as originals. All 
kinds of stringed instruments are made 
in this romantic village. 

The zither is one of the sweetest 
and most touching of instruments. 
It is unique ! Of these parts it is a 
native ; but it is only within the last 

V 

forty years that it has reached its pres¬ 
ent completeness. Zithers have been 
made in Mittenwald for the last 100 
years; and, strange to say, all zither 
makers of note who have established 
themselves in Munich, Vienna and 
other large cities, have either been 
born in Mittenwald or have learned 
their trade there. Most uf the peas¬ 
ants can play the zither a little (play 
a “ Landler ” or a waltz.”) In Russia 
it is very popular, and some of the 
best German zither players are there 
at the present. In this country it is 
also getting well known. It has too 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


121 


little power for a large concert room, 
but it is well suited to parlor enter¬ 
tainments. 


CREMONA VIOLINS. 

Dr. Lee, who was lecturer in St. 
Thomas’ Hospital, London, and an 
accomplished amateur performer on the 
violin, entertained a great passion for 
the instruments themselves, and made 
hundreds of experiments to find out 
the cause of the superiorit}” of tone in 
the Cremona. He had a fine Cremona 
taken to pieces, and a number of new 
instruments made in every part exactly 
like it, and yet none of them equalled 
it in tone. He thus found out that it 
was not a particular form which gave 
these instruments a superiority over all 
others. He then experimented with 
various kinds of wood, and also treated 
the same sort of wood in various ways, 
in order to discover if this was the 
cause. For example, he steeped some 
in alcohol, others in oil, then dried 
them, and had them made of the gen¬ 
uine Cremona shape. All these efforts 
however, were vain ; the old Cremona 
sung sweetly over them all. At last it 
struck him that there might be some¬ 
thing in the varnish connected with 
the subject, and he discovered that 
amber varnish was the coating of old 
Cremo. To work at varnishes he then 
went, (for he was a determined experi¬ 
menter and a good chemist,) and at 
last he made a grand hit. By making 
amber varnish in the same way that 
copal varnish is made, namely, by heat¬ 
ing the amber, then pouring hot oil 
upon it, he obtained a varnish which, 
when applied to his violins, improved 
their tones in a wonderful manner. 
This varnish takes a long time to 
become perfectly dry. The violins to 
which it is applied have to be hung up 


in the open air for months before they 
lose their tacky character, but when 
perfectly dry it is the grand solvent 
of the Cremona’s superiority. Severia, 
the famous violinist, and pupil of 
Paganini, was presented with one of 
Dr. Lee’s violins, and he declared it 
was equal to a Cremona; of twenty 
violins in his possession it was excelled 
only by one, while it was superior to 
all the others. 


CELLULOID — A SUBSTITUTE FOR 

IVORY. 

A substitute under the name of cel¬ 
luloid, the invention of Mr. Hyatt, of 
Albany, originally intended as a sub¬ 
stitute for ivory in the manufacture of 
billiard balls, possesses qualities which 
render it applicable to a great variety 
of manufactures. As originally pre¬ 
pared it consisted of a combination of 
soluble cotton and ether or alcohol, 
but it was subsequently ascertained 
that a still more satisfactory result 
could be obtained by the addition of 
camphor to the alcohol; and finally, 
camphor alone was mixed with the 
ground cotton pulp, which hardens in 
drying and becomes “celluloid.” This 
substance — which is maintained by 
the inventor to be a truly chemical 
compound and not a mechanical mix¬ 
ture— can be colored in any way 
desired. The varying degrees of solid¬ 
ity and flexibility required are obtained 
by the different proportions of the 
camphor. The substance is naturally 
of a pale amber color, but may be 
made of any tint by the application of 
mineral pigments or dyes soluble in 
alcohol, or any of the aniline colors 
may be employed. 

Celluloid is hard and elastic, ranging 
in hardness from that of iron to ivory. 
It is as tough as whalebone, elasticity 













THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


122 
-I /V 


being one of the most prominent char¬ 
acteristics. It makes good insulators 
for knobs of telegraphic instruments, 
for insulating posts for electrical 
machines, and for telegraphic wires; 
as although a good non-conductor it is 
not perceptibly electric. It is well 
adapted to the manufacture of combs, 
and is largely used in the preparation 
of dental plates, as it can be made of 
precisely the color of the palate and 
gums. At a temperature of two hun¬ 
dred and fifty to three hundred degrees 
it can be moulded to an} 7 desired form. 
Several companies have been started 
for the manufacture of different objects 
from celluloid; two in Newark, and 
several others in Philadelphia, New 
York, and elsewhere. 


COLOR BLINDNESS. 

A brakesman has been discovered in 
Sedalia who “cannot see any difference 
between the color of a red lantern and 
a green.” This suggests the question 
whether it would not be well to test 
the ability of all persons — such as 
railway employees and seamen who are 
to be employed in signaling, to dis¬ 
tinguish colors ; for it is a curious fact 
that many of those who are color 
blind are entirely unconscious of their 
infirmity ; moreover one of the com¬ 
monest forms of this abnormal condi¬ 
tion of the eye is an inability to 
distinguish between red and green, 
two primary colors very generally used 
in signaling. And although such a 
marked case as the one cited is com¬ 
paratively rare, the fact that the defect 
does exist, suggests a possibility of 
accident which can be easily guarded 
against. 

Attention was first directed to this 
subject of color-blindness by Dr. John 
Dalton, an English chemist of note, 


who in a paper published in 1794, gave 
an account of a strange defect in his 
vision which rendered him incapable 
of distinguishing any difference be¬ 
tween such colors as red, green, blue 
and purple. He attributed this pecu¬ 
liarity to the presence of colored fluids 
in the eye, but recent investigations 
demonstrate that this affection is due 
not so much to a malformation or lack 
of sensibility in the eye as to a want 
of that perceptive faculty in the mind, 
which we call color; and there is one 
instance known of a person who was 
not only unable to say what objects 
were green, or red, or blue, but to 
whom all colors were but so many 
degrees of shade, the whole face of 
nature being represented by blacks 
and greys and white. 

It is extraordinary that while Dr. 
Dalton’s case is the first one of which 
we have an} 7 record, persons afflicted 
with color-blindness (or “daltonism” 
as it is sometimes called,) m a lesser 
degree, are quite common among us. 

Dealers in worsteds and zephyrs say 
that it is not unusual for ladies desiring 
to “ match patterns ” themselves, to 
fail to distinguish the shades in greys 
and neutral tints, and to confound the 
paler hues of pink with lilac, olive with 
brown, etc. 

A remarkable illustration of one 
form of color-blindness was given some 
months ago in London. Several of the 
later pictures of Turner were exhibited, 
at first under ordinary daylight, and 
afterwards with a strong yellow light 
thrown upon them; by this latter 
process all the colors in the picture 
were improved and a more natural 
effect was given ; thus showing that 
as the artist advanced in years his per¬ 
ception of one color increased, and he 
saw his painting as it were through 
yellow spectacles. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


123 


The natives of India have a wonder¬ 
ful faculty of readily distinguishing 
difference in color so slight as to be 
absolutely invisible to the European 
eye; the gradations of color in some 
of their dyes exceeding ours by many 
hundreds of shades. 

All of us who are not afflicted with 
this affection know how necessar}’’ it is, 
in order to produce rich effects in 
furnishing our apartments, to use well 
contrasted colors ; but it is not so gen¬ 
erally known that the most perfect 
contrasts are produced by colors which 
are complementary, that is to say, those 
colors which if blended together would 
produce white. These complements 
can always be discovered by this very 
simple process : make a disc, say two 
inches in diameter, of the color of 
which you desire the complement, 
place it upon a sheet of white paper in 
a strong light and look steadily at it 
for a few moments, then quickly remove 
the disc and you see in its place an¬ 
other disc of the desired color. It is 
also well to remember in selecting wall¬ 
papers or carpets, that after looking at 
such bright hues as red, blue, etc., for 
some time they seem to lose their bril- 
• liancy, whereas a green seen beside a 
red, or any two complementary colors 
in juxtaposition, appear much brighter 
than when seen apart. 


CHECKED PERSPIRATION. 


There are two kinds of perspiration, 
sensible and insensible. When we see 
drops of water on the surface of the 
body as the result of exercise or sub¬ 
sidence of fever, that is sensible perspi¬ 
ration , perspiration recognized by the 
sense of sight. But when perspiration 
is so gentle that it cannot be detected 
in the shape of water drops, when no 
moisture can be felt, when it is known 


to us only by a certain softness of the 
skin, that is insensible perspiration, 
and is so gentle that it may be checked 
to a very considerable extent without 
special injury. But, to use popular 
language, which cannot be mistaken, 
when a man is sweating freely, and it 
is suddenly checked, and the sweat is 
not brought out again in a very few 
moments, sudden and painful sickness 
is a very certain result. 

What, then, checks perspiration ? 
A draft of air while we are at rest, 
after exercise, or getting the clothing 
wet and remaining at rest while it is 
so. Getting out of a warm bed and 
going to an open window or door has 
been the death of multitudes. 

A lady heard the cry of fire at mid¬ 
night ; it was bitter cold; it was 
so near the flames illuminated her 
chamber. She left the bed, hoisted 
the window, the cold chilled her in a 
moment. From that hour until her 
death, a quarter of a century later, she 
never saw a well day. 

A young lady went to her window 
in her night clothes to look at some¬ 
thing in the street, leaning her unpro¬ 
tected arms on the stone window-sill, 
which was damp and cold. She became 
an invalid, and will remain so for life. 

Sir Thomas Colby being in a profuse 
sweat one night, happened to remember 
that he had left the key of his wine 
cellar on the parlor table, and, fearing 
his servants might improve the inad¬ 
vertence and drink some of his wine, 
he left his bed, walked down stairs ; 
the sweating process was checked, from 
which he died in a few days, leaving 
six millions of dollars in English funds. 
His illness was so brief and violent 
that he had no opportunity to make 
his will, and his immense property was 
divided among five or six day-laborers 
who were his nearest relatives. 









124 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


The great practical lesson which we 
wish to impress upon the mind of the 
reader is this : When you are perspir¬ 
ing freely, keep in motion until you get 
to a good fire, or to some place where 
you are perfectly sheltered from any 
draft of air whatever. 


rilE CURIOUS WAYS OF PLANTS. 


Who can account for the ways of 
plants, or explain why a certain 
species will grow in one place and 
will not in another exactly similar, 
so far as human intelligence can 
determine ? 

The American aloe is a hundred 
years in getting read} r to flower, 
whereas the gourd grows like Jack’s 
bean-stalk. Some wild flowers dis¬ 
appear on the advance of civilization, 
while on the other hand the plan¬ 
tain, if the truth is told, goes where- 
ever Europeans go, and in this coun¬ 
try was unknown until after the 
English came, following so closely 
on their tracks that the Indians 
gave it the name of “ white man's 
foot.” 

Some varieties, as above intima¬ 
ted, may be found in a particular 
locality and nowhere else within 
half a dozen miles. There is, for 
example, in Central New England, 
one spot where are a few shrubs of 
the mountain laurel (“spoon wood' 1 ) 
in a little patch by the roadside, and, 
although this would seem the natu¬ 
ral country for it, it can be dis¬ 
covered in no other place anywhere 
about. 

Then there is the fringed gentian, 
which has been seen beside a seclu¬ 
ded road some six miles away; but 
with that exception, appears wholly 
unknown in the vicinity; yet the 
closed gentian is abundant. Another 


of the perver, ely disappointing flow¬ 
ers is the dog-tooth violet; not, how¬ 
ever, more capricious than the yellow 
violet and the noble liverwort ( hepa - 
tica triloba), which, in certain dry 
maple woods in the one case, and in 
open knoll-covered pastures in the 
other, grow in great abundance; still, 
one might search acres of similar 
woods and pastures for them, all to 
no purpose. 

Another case, somewhat in point, 
is the holly — indigenous, or at least 
one variety, to moist woods along 
the eastern boarder of New England ; 
but so partaking of the afore-named 
eccentricity, that he may count him¬ 
self a happy man who can find it, 
and prove his success by great arm¬ 
fuls of it wherewith to deck his house 
at Christmas. One gets glimpses of 
it while riding through some swampy 
tract on Cape Ann, the, bright berries 
and evergreen leaves, so suggestive of 
English good cheer, betraying it. 
There, too, in summer, by searching 
diligently, one may find a species of 
magnolia, that being about its north¬ 
ern limit. 

No common New England flower 
is so little to be depended upon as 
the trailing arbutus. It is difficult to 
determine what it wants. It abounds 
in gravelly knolls by the wayside, and 
thrives on the very edge of pasture 
bogs, and in the shade of woods ; and 
yet, with all this versatility, there 
are many towns where it is never 
found, and where, though transplant¬ 
ed and tended with care, it cannot be 
made to live. 

Quite opposite, in these respects, 
is the “cardinal flower,” whose home 
is by the water side, the only place 
where it grows naturally, although 
the kind of water is not of imminent 
consequence, for it will do just as 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


125 


well in a dark nook under the up- 
heaved roof of a willow, on the edge 
of a mill pond, in the muddiest ooze, 
as in the cleanest sand along a river’s 
bank, its chief requirement seeming 
to be that it shall not be crowded — 
one stalk always standing by itself, 
independent of its kind and not in 
close neighborhood to other plants. 
It is so adaptive that it will bear 
removal to a garden, taking kindly 
to its new conditions; and there it 
will come up year after year, flaming 
out in live scarlet, in “one glorious 
blood red,” as if nothing had hap¬ 
pened to it. 

There are other facts, more singu¬ 
lar as to the ways of growth and 
“ hows ” of blooming. One can under¬ 
stand that a grape-vine may hold to 
its support b}" means of a tendril, 
while an ivy or a Virginia creeper 
secures itself by thrusting its root¬ 
lets into a crevice of a wall or in 
the bark of a tree ; but why should 
a honeysuckle and a bean vine wind 
in opposite directions, the one going 
to the left and the other to the right P 
and either will swing in the wind or 
sprawl over the ground rather than 
turn the other way. 

The ketmia opens at nine o’clock in 
the morning, and shuts at ten, as if it 
had a visual weakness ; while a bed of 
Portulaccas never expand unless the 
sun is out; and the hotter he shines 
the wider they spread themselves; and 
the evening primrose waits until he 
has gone down, and then comes open 
with a snap, like a subdued kind of 
fire-cracker. 

But most unaccountable of all, 
perhaps, is the night-blooming jasmin. 
You see a simple tree-like plant, with 
a plain style of leaf, at the base of 
which grows a spray of yellowish 
green tubes like lilac buds, suggest¬ 


ing, more than anything else, a string 
of small candles. You look at them 
in the middle of the day, and they 
are “ only that and nothing more; ” 
and you might, if you did not know 
their ways, forget all about them; 
but when evening comes, forgetting 
is impossible. The room is full of 
fragrance, rich as orange flowers, and 
almost as subtle as violets ; and lo ! 
your little candles are all lighted; 
and from somewhere about them 
comes that perfume which is so deli¬ 
cious and so mysterious as to its 
source. The next morning they be¬ 
gin to contract; by noon the five 
points are all close packed, and there 
is no scent to them or about them 
at all till night comes on again; and 
so they continue, scentless through 
daylight, but of exquisite sweetness 
when darkness appears. 


“ BULLS ” AND “ BEARS.” 

The meaning of these terms is not 
generally understood. The object of 
the Bull is to enhance prices, while 
the Bear fattens when prices fall, and 
all his energies are brought to bear to 
depress prices, that when down to the 
lowest ebb he may buy, and thrive 
upon the reaction which he expects 
will follow. The Bear delights in 
“ panics,” and financial troubles in 
general, because he gains by “ the rise.” 
No rise can occur except it be by a 
preceded tumble. The Bear keeps no 
stock on hand. His plan is to sell 
“short,” and buy to fill his contract 
when prices are depressed, his contract 
contemplating a profit, by a fall below 
the price for which he has agreed to 
furnish. 

Hence it is to the interest of the 
Bear to depress in every way he can, 
by false rumors. “ A corner ” is got 










126 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


up by tlie Bulls combining, who learn¬ 
ing that there is a large short interest, 
form a clique and get control of prices, 
securing an upward movement and the 
bears are forced to buy on an advanc¬ 
ing market to fill their contracts. The 
whole system of dealing in stocks and 
produce, and of brokerage generally, is 
merely gambling, nothing more, noth¬ 
ing less._ 

HOW TO CURE A COLD. 

The popular domestic treatment 
consists in the use of a hot foot-bath 
at bed time, a fire in the bed room, a 
warm bed and some hot drink taken 
after getting into bed, the diaphoretic 
action being assisted by an extra 
amount of bed clothes. Complete im¬ 
mersion in a warm bath is more effica¬ 
cious than a foot bath; but the free 
action of the skin is much more cer¬ 
tainly obtained by the influence of hot 
air — most surely and profusely, per¬ 
haps, by the Turkish bath. The Turk¬ 
ish bath, however, is not always to 
be had, and even when available, 
its use in the treatment of catarrh 
is attended with some inconvenience. 
In particular, there is the risk of a 
too speedy check to the perspiration 
after the patient leaves the bath. On 
the whole, the plan which combines 
the greatest degree of efficiency with 
universal applicability, consists in the 
use of a simple hot-air bath, which the 
patient can have in his own bed room. 
All that is required is a spirit lamp, 
with a sufficiently large wick. Such 
lamps are made of tin and sold by 
most surgical instrument makers. 

The lamp should hold sufficient 
spirit to burn for half an hour. The 
patient sits undressed in a chair with 
a lamp between his feet, rather than 
under the chair, care being taken to 
avoid setting fire to the blankets, of 


which an attendant then takes two or 
three, and folds them around the 
patient from his neck to the floor, 
so as to inclose him and the lamp, 
the hot air from which passes freely 
around the body. In from a quarter 
to half an hour there is usually a free 
perspiration, which may be kept up 
for a time by getting into bed between 
hot blankets. I have myself gone 
into a hot air bath suffering from 
headache, pain in the limbs, and 
other indications of a severe incipient 
catarrh, and in the course of half an 
hour I have been entirely and per¬ 
manently freed from these symptoms, 
by the action of the bath. 

Another simple and efficient mode 
of exciting the action of the skin 
consists in wrapping the undressed 
patient in a sheet wrung out of warm 
water, then, over this, folding two 
or three blankets. The patient may 
remain thus “ packed ” for an hour 
or two, until free perspiration has 
been excited. 


HISTORY OF BOOTS. 

Boots, which are only a lengthened 
variety of shoes, were among the most 
ancient articles of attire. Shoes ex¬ 
tended a certain height up the leg, 
laced, ornamented, and of fanciful 
colors, were in use by the ancient 
Egyptians, Greeks and Romans. Dif¬ 
ferent kinds of half-boots were worn 
by the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo- 
Normans. In the reign of Edward IV., 
the boot proper, with tops and spurs, 
was established as an article of knight¬ 
ly dress. In the reign of Charles I., a 
boot, wide at the top, made of Spanish 
leather, came into use. Charles II. 
introduced a highly decorated French 
boot as an article of gay courtly attire. 
Meanwhile, the boot, or jack-boot as 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


127 


it was called, had become indispensable 
in the costume of cavalry soldiers and 
horsemen generally, and was regularly 
naturalized by William III. and his 
followers in England. The jack-boot 
was strongly made, extended in length 
above the knee; was large at the top 
had a very high heel, and round the 
ankle it had a flat leather band bearing 
a strong spur. In the early years of 
the present century a number of mem¬ 
bers of the House of Commons wore 
top-boots. What contributed to break 
up the general use of top-boots was 
the introduction of the Hessian boot 
as an article of walking dress. It was 
worn over tight pantaloons and was a 
handsome piece of attire. They were 
superseded by the Wellington boot, 
which was introduced by the great 
Duke as a simplification under the 
loose military trouser. This species of 
boot has in its turn been almost 
entirely abandoned in England, in 
consequence of the universal use of 
short ankle boots, but it is still used 
by some classes of persons in the 
United States, with the trousers stuffed 
loosely in at the top. 


HOW TO HARDEN DRILLS. 

A watchmaker in Gosling, by the 
name of Schussleder, has recently 
published his method of hardening 
gravers and drills, which he claims 
renders them almost as hard as the 
diamond. He first heats the tool to 
a white heat, and then presses it into 
a stick of sealing wax, leaves it 
but a second there, and then sticks 
it into the wax in another place. 
This operation is rapidly repeated 
until the graver is too cool to enter 
the wax. In turning or drilling, the 
tool is moistened with oil of turpen¬ 
tine. 


TELESCOPES.--HOW THEY ARE MADE. 


It may not be uninteresting to the 
intelligent reader to know somewhat of 
the method of construction of these 
mighty engines of the stars, which 
are so largely the means of our 
astronomical knowledge. The estab¬ 
lishment that gives birth to these 
monsters — but not monstrosities — is 
situated at Cambridgeport, Mass., with¬ 
in easy rifle range of Boston. It is an 
unpretending structure of plain brick, 
two stories high, about forty feet long 
by twenty-five feet wide, with an L of 
the same width and thirty feet long, 
and a small one-story room, perhaps 
fifteen by twenty-five. All the power 
used in this factory is in a five-horse 
power engine, of which more than 
three-horse power is seldom used. 

The firm is composed of Mr. Alvan 
Clark and his two sons. They employ 
at present about a half-dozen hands, 
and never have, in the busiest times, 
more than ten. The senior Mr. Clark 
is now over 70 years of age, and did 
not commence telescope making until 
he was over 40 years old. He has 
picked up his knowledge and skill 
with no instruction whatever. He has 
never seen a lens in the process of 
construction in the hands of any one 
out of his own shop. Yet here are 
made those wonderful instruments 
which bring into our very presence 
objects far away in the infinity of 
space, and which no other maker in 
the world has either surpassed or 
equaled. 

The object glass is, by far, the most 
difficult part of the work of telescope 
making. This is composed of two 
lenses, one of crown and the other of 
flint glass, the former to disperse or 
scatter the colors in the ray of light, 
and the latter to refract or bend the 








128 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


rays to one point, called the focus. 
The combined effect is to magnify the 
object, and at the same time to destroy 
all the rainbow colors, thus presenting 
the object to the observer in a white 
light, or its natural color. These 
lenses are made from an immense mass 
of molten glass, called a u pot,” which 
at first looks no more like a lens than 
a rough block of marble resembles the 
life-like statue into which it is chiseled. 

This sawing or cutting is done by 
steam power, and a plate an inch thick 
can thus be cut in one-half or three- 
quarters of an hour. It is next ground 
down by the revolving of a concave 
plate pressed upon it, one surface at a 
time, till it becomes a rough double 
convex lens. It is now opaque, like 
ground glass, and is afterward ground 
or smoothed down to a finer surface by 
means of emery, and then polished in 
a hand process by rubbing it with coal 
tar, beeswax and rouge. When a lens 
is sufficiently polished to admit of the 
transmission of light, it is to be cor¬ 
rected for chromatic and spherical 
aberration, or confusion among the 
rays. The first is the showing of the 
colors of the rainbow, as seen in the 
triangular glass pendents to chande¬ 
liers, which obscure the view of the 
object. This is corrected by a careful 
adjustment of the relative thickness of 
the crown and flint plates. 

Spherical aberration causes an unnat¬ 
ural rounded or curved appearance to 
the object. This is due to the fact 
that the rays of light passing through 
the outer part of the lens are brought 
to a focus sooner than those passing 
nearer its centre. The distorted ap¬ 
pearance of the face as we look upon 
the surface of a polished teapot, or 
into the bowl of a shining tea-spoon, 
is an illustration of spherical aberra¬ 
tion. While the work of bringing the 


glass to the general form of the lens* 
and even polishing it, is comparatively 
simple, the highest skill and the most 
studied care are strained to their utmost 
in properly correcting its tendency to 
produce aberration ; and it is in this 
very particular that Messrs. Clark 
excel all other telescope makers. 

The glass in this massive form is 
made in Birmingham, England, by 
Chance Bros. & Co., who are large 
glass manufacturers in other lines. 
This firm made the glass of which 
the English Crystal Palace was con¬ 
structed. Parts are selected from the 
molten mass as nearly pure as possible,, 
and moulded into rectangular blocks 
of convenient shape and size. Even 
in this apparently simple process there 
is need of great care and skill. The 
“pot 11 of melted flint glass, which, 
weighs from 600 to 2,000 pounds* 
must be constantly stirred till the 
chemical change, which would fill the 
mass with bubbles, has ceased to act* 
and even till it has become so stiff in 
cooling that it can be stirred no 
longer. 

To give some idea of the difficulty 
in this seemingly insignificant part of 
the work, it need only be said that the 
simple glass for the lens of one of the 
twenty-six inch telescopes cost, in its 
rough, massive state, no less than 
$6,000, and $3,000 had to be paid 
down before the operators would 
undertake the work at all, and if 
unsuccessful in ten trials, they were to 
be released from further obligation. 
On arrival at the factory in this 
country, the block of glass is cut by 
the revolution of a circular disk 
having a flange on the edge of its 
lower surface, which, with sand for 
teeth, cuts into the glass in a similar 
way to that in which marble is sawed. 
This gives the glass a disk-like form, 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


129 


and the first real resemblance to a lens. 
As no mathematical rules can aid in 
the perfection of the lens this can be 
effected onty by a wearisome system of 
tests, continued daily and hourly for 
weeks and months. By these, defects 
are carefully marked and are then to be 
removed. But the required modifica¬ 
tions are so slight and the work so 
delicate that, hard as the glass is, the 
workmen dare undertake nothing more 
effectual than to simply rub down its 
surface by application of wet rouge 
with the finger tips, and often the 
rubbing that removes a defect in one 
place produces another near it. The 
amount of surface that is worn away 
in this process is incalculably small, 
yet it makes all the difference between 
a complete failure and such an ob¬ 
jective as no one but this firm can 
make. 

It would make no appreciable effect 
upon a scratch, and when one of these 
appears on the surface of the lens it 
can be removed only by going back to 
the grinding process, which of course 
necessitates the repetition of the 
smoothing, polishing and correcting 
processes afterward. It should be 
noticed that the repeated tests have 
to be made as if the telescope were 
already mounted and in working order, 
whereas, in fact, the tube and supports 
of the instrument are not yet prepared 
for use. So some temporary mounting 
is provided, which, though rude, must 
be exact and easily manipulated. And 
as looking at the stars can be accom¬ 
plished only in the night, this would 
seem to necessitate working largely at 
those unseasonable hours when honest 
people are supposed to be in bed. 

But Mr. Clark’s contrivance for 
obviating these difficulties is as novel 
as it is original. He has excavated a 
passage underground 230 feet long, at 


one end of which he places his lens in 
focus, and at the other he allows light 
to pass through small pin-holes in a 
sheet of tin, which is so placed as to 
keep out all light except what is 
admitted through these apertures. 
Light thus admitted into this dark 
subterranean chamber has the effect of 
stars to an observer looking through 
the lens. In this manner, instead of 
working by night when the real stars 
can be seen, he has invented artificial 
stars. 

In addition to these tests, they make 
genuine observations every fair night, 
and in this way have discovered many 
interesting and important stellar worlds 
which practical astronomers had over¬ 
looked. So they are doing good service 
to the scientific world as astronomers 
beyond their great acquisitions as 
astronomical instrument makers. It is 
decidedly amusing to notice the exces¬ 
sive care with which they mount those 
great plates of glass for frequent test¬ 
ing. If you have seen the gentleness 
with which a very sick child, or a 
severely wounded person, is moved by 
careful nurses, you can have some idea 
of the tender pains taken in moving 
this child of anxious and watchful toil. 

A hand barrow has been constructed 
for this special purpose. A soft bed is 
prepared upon it, and carefully overlaid 
with snowy sheets of fine, soft paper. 
The glass plates are placed side by side 
in a vertical position, slowly- moved 
toward each other, and kept from 
immediate contact by pieces of tinfoil, 
then turned slowly over till they rest 
horizontally upon a softly-cushioned 
stool which has been placed in the 
centre of the brazen “cell” or hoop of 
100 pounds’ weight which is to receive 
it. Then the cell is slowly raised till 
the plates rest upon a shoulder within 
it. Now another and smaller brass 





130 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


hoop is screwed above the lens as it 
rests upon the shoulder, and the pre¬ 
cious treasure is securely fastened into 
the cell. 

It is now softly placed upon the 
bed, and, with great caution, wheeled 
across the building, where by a sim¬ 
ilar tender process, it is removed to 
the rolled iron tube resembling a long 
steam boiler in which it is roughly 
mounted for testing. The lens for 
the Washington telescope was nine 
months in process of construction. 
The present one for Mr. McCormick 
has already received the work of six 
months, and they say is now “liable 
to be finished any day ; 11 but it would 
be nothing surprising if it still re¬ 
quired months for its satisfactory 
completion. These are protected in 
the building by a complete system of 
burglar and fire telegraphic alarms 
contrived by the Clarks themselves, 
and communicating to their residence 
near by. 

Considering the amount of untiring 
skilled labor expended upon these by 
which rude lumps of glass become 
worth a comfortable fortune, it will 
not seem strange that they are tended 
and watched over like a sick child. 
The greater number of telescopes 
made in this establishment are of 
only four or five inch aperture, which 
are only good sized spy-glasses. 

A good four-inch objective will cost 
a month’s constant labor, though 
according to the quality of the glass, 
some take three times as long as 
others. Eight or ten is considered 
good work for a year. A lens of this 
size is worth one hundred dollars in 
gold, and the whole instrument will 
bring from two hundred and fifty dol¬ 
lars to three hundred and fifty dollars, 
according to quality of work and the 
materials used. 


THE HOME OF THE PERFUMES. 


We are in the south of France, on 
the coast of the Mediterranean, where 
the cities of Nizza, Grasse and Cannes 
form a sort of triangle. A rich, but 
yet light soil; to the north, a range of 
mountains, which shut out the cold 
blasts of the north winds — these ad¬ 
vantages combine, with a soft sky, 
resembling that of Italy, to make this 
the most charming and the most fertile 
part of France. It is, therefore, with 
a true national pride that the peasants 
of this district are wont to say : 
“Plant a walking stick and a flower 
will bloom from its handle. 1 ' 

Plants which everywhere else are 
cultivated in gardens as ornaments, 
form here the main product of the 
soil. There are no gardens here, for 
the entire district is a bed of fragrant 
flowers. The jessamine, the tuberose, 
the orange blossom, the daffodil, the 
rose, the acacia, and many other plants, 
here bud and bloom the 'year round. 
The exuberance of these lovely chil¬ 
dren of Flora affects the character of 
the inhabitants as well as their mode 
of living. A stranger is affected by 
the fragrance as if drugged by some 
narcotic. 

The culture of these flowers is 
almost the exclusive occupation of the 
peasants. During the Summer months 
all hands are busy among the flowers 
— weeding and watering. Old and 
young are occupied in gathering the 
leaves of flowers, of which it takes so 
many to make a pound. 

The following statistics will show 
to what extent this business is carried 
on: The product of one year has been 
14,750,000 lbs. of orange blossoms, 
530,000 lbs. of roses, 100,000 lbs. of 
jessamine, 75,000 lbs. of violets, 45,000 
lbs. of acacia, 30,000 lbs. of geranium. 







THE PEOPLES' LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


131 


leaves, 24,000 lbs. of tuberoses, 5,000 
lbs. of daffodils, besides a large quan¬ 
tity of lavender, and many other 
flowers. 

The quantity of perfume contained 
in this mass of leaves may be imagined, 
yet the peasants themselves do not 
understand the art of extracting the 
delicate odors from the flowers, among 
which nature has thrown them, and it 
is the chemist who has to continue the 
work. Thus we behold in the midst 
of these fields of flowers the signs of 
modern industry, the numerous tall 
chimneys of the different laboratories. 
It is the same here as everywhere else : 
the first producer has to content him¬ 
self with but a small profit; and the 
land-owners consider it a good business 
if they receive from the chemists one- 
third of the total profit. 

In these laboratories every spark of 
poetry connected with the beauty of 
flowers disappears. The leaves are 
turned into a solid mass; the balmy 
essence takes the place of the emblem¬ 
atic interpretation — a chemical pro¬ 
cess has finished the work. 

Oils or greasy substances are impreg¬ 
nated with the odoriferous elements of 
the flowers by three different opera¬ 
tions. Two of these depend upon the 
fact that oils or fats brought in contact 
with the flowers, absorb and retain 
their fragrance. If afterward these 
perfumed fats and oils are thrown into 
pure alcohol, the latter extracts the 
perfume from the oils or fats, and thus 
an essence is obtained. 

These two methods of working are 
called in France “enfleurage ” and 
“ maceration.” For the process of 
“enfleurage” a sort of a frame with 
shelves is used. Between the wooden 
shelves are glass tablets, upon which 
the purified fat is spread. Upon these 
are laid the fresh-picked flowers. Some 


forty to fifty of these shelves are piled 
up and left for twenty-four hours, after 
which time the old flowers are removed, 
and fresh ones put in their places. 
This process is continued until the fat 
is sufficiently impregnated with the 
odoriferous principle of the flowers; 
then the fat is melted from the glass 
at a moderate heat, and separated from 
the leaves which may have adhered to 
it, after which it is packed in jars 
and boxes, and is then ready for ex¬ 
portation. 

“Maceration” is performed by 
soaking the flowers for a certain 
length of time in the fat or oil. Prac¬ 
tice has shown that not all flowers will 
yield their perfumes in this way ; some 
discharging their perfume with more 
facility than others. The acacia is 
particularly adapted for “maceration.” 

Of late years another process has 
been introduced, consisting in treating 
the flowers with various ethers, etc., 
but it is not yet in general use. Last¬ 
ly, the odor of some flowers is obtained 
by distillation; but delicate odors are 
injured or dispersed by this operation. 

The essence of orange blossoms ob¬ 
tained by “enfleurage” is far superior 
to that gained by distillation. Laven¬ 
der is almost the only plant that does 
not lose by distillation. 

Extracts obtained by “enfleurage” 
or “maceration” are the condensed 
odors of the living flowers, while by 
distillation we obtain only a second¬ 
ers perfume. 

It has been a question of considera¬ 
ble importance how to obtain the ex¬ 
tracts of flowers of tropical countries. 
Experiments also have been made in 
Algiers, but without favorable results. 
However pure the fat or oil used may 
be, it soon turns rancid in a hot climate. 
If the process of etherizing is brought 
to perfection, the flower culture of the 






132 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


south of France will doubtless dimin¬ 
ish, for the tropics of America alone 
would furnish enough perfume to sup¬ 
ply the entire western hemisphere. 


CURIOUS CALCULATION. 

There is something wonderful in 
figures; and numbers, when calcu¬ 
lated, startle us by their immensity. 
We talk of millions and billions with 
little thought of the vastness of the 
sum we name. The lips may utter 
the words glibly, but the understand¬ 
ing fails to grasp their real signifi¬ 
cance. Take our own national debt 
as an illustration. Everybody knows 
it is large, but few have ever stopped 
to consider its appalling magnitude. 
A few calculations will not, we trust, 
be uninteresting to our readers: 

Let us suppose that the national 
debt is, in round numbers, $2,500,000,- 
000. If an experienced cashier was 
to commence counting this, at the 
rate of three silver dollars per second, 
working diligently eight hours per 
day, 300 days in the year, it would 
take him about one hundred years 
to complete the count. 

If the silver dollars were placed 
side by side, touching each other, 
they would reach nearly three times 
round the world; they would pave a 
highway the width of Chicago’s streets 
more than 200 miles in length. 

Fused into one solid mass of silver 
the}" would make a column ten feet 
square and 2,500 feet high ; or a bar 
fifty miles long and one foot square. 

If a piece of silver be estimated at 
one ounce in weight, and the money 
loaded into carts containing one ton 
each, and driven one before the other, 
each horse and cart occupying two 
rods, the procession would extend five 
hundred miles. 


Or consider that only about 1,000,- 
000,000 minutes have elapsed since the 
birth of Christ, and that if one dollar 
had been put away each mimite, dey 
and night, since that event, the accu¬ 
mulation would amount to but little 
more than one-third of the debt this 
nation now owes. If this calculation 
was applied to England or France, 
whose national debt is nearly twice 
as large as ours, the result would be 
still more startling. 


HOW JAPANESE MECHANICS WORK. 

A correspondent of the New York 
Times gives the following interesting 
account of the Japanese artisans in 
San Francisco : 

“ The steamship Colorado brought 
over a company of Japanese perform¬ 
ers, calling themselves the Ha-ya-ta- 
kee troupe. During the past week 
they have been fitting up the Metro¬ 
politan theatre in the similitude of a 
Japanese temple, for the exhibition of 
their feats of strength. It is said that 
the entire company, even the workmen 
who are engaged in putting up the 
stage, belong to one family. It is a 
curious sight to see these Japanese 
carpenters at work. They use their 
hands and toes at the same time, the 
latter being as handy as their fingers. 
At first there seems to be a great ad¬ 
vantage in their having four hands 
instead of two, and, although they 
seem to work with great rapidity, yet 
they do not accomplish one-half as 
much as a good American mechanic 
would in the same time. A Japanese 
carpenter makes no use of work 
benches or vises. If he wants to 
sharpen a saw, he squats on his hams, 
places the back of the tool to be oper¬ 
ated on on the ground, grips one end 
of the saw with his left hand, seizes 













THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


133 


the other with the toes of his right 
foot, and goes to work. Their tools 
are not like American tools, though 
they have a slight similarity, showing 
that all tools have one common parent¬ 
age, whether their inventor was Tubal 
Cain or some other artificer. All Jap¬ 
anese saws are shaped like butchers 1 
cleavers. The handle is like the handle 
of a cleaver, but flatfish, as if whittled 
out of a piece of inch board; the 
metal shank of the saw is driven into 
that handle, and the whole is secured 
by being wrapped with fine split cane. 
The metal of the saw is about the sub¬ 
stance of our saws, but the teeth are 
narrower, giving more of them to the 
inch, and much longer. They are all 
pointed toward the handle, and cut the 
wood like so many hocks. 

u When a Japanese wants to rip a 
plank, he places it across any thing 
which will elevate the end a few inch¬ 
es, then stands on the wood and cuts 
it by seizing the cleaver-looking saw 
in both hands, and pulling it toward 
him. Thus, by a number of short, 
quick, up strokes, he gets through a 
plank, not so speedily but quite as 
effectively, as an American carpenter 
would with the long, slow, down stroke 
of the rip-saw. The planes are small, 
with single irons — no handles. They 
are shorter, lighter and the wood shal¬ 
lower than ours, being generally not 
more than an inch deep. To plane a 
piece of wood, they lay it on the 
ground, squat on their hams, hold it 
fast with their toes, and work the 
plane with both hands toward them. 
To drill a hole they have a short awl 
inserted in a round piece of stick eight 
or nine inches long. They take the 
wood between their toes, squat as be¬ 
fore, and make the hole by rubbing 
the handle of the awl between their 
hands, in less time than one of our 


carpenters could drill one with a gim- 
blet. Their hammers are solid cylin¬ 
drical pieces, not made shapely with 
waists and graceful outlines like ours. 
They have the same flat-sided handles 
as the saws. The Japs have iron 
squares, not unlike American squares, 
marked with degrees. Their measures 
are brass, very light and fluted. On 
one side tine inch, or what stands for 
the inch with us, is 1 3-15 inches, and 
divided into ten parts. On the other 
side is a different scale, measuring 
1 13-16 inches, and divided into twelve 
parts. Some of their tools appear to 
be mere children’s toys; for instance, 
they have a smoothing plane two and 
one-lialf inches long, one inch broad 
and half an inch thick. Their chisels 
are light and small. The cutting parts 
of some are the size and shape of a 
section of half a dollar — the square 
being the cutting edge, and a round 
metal shaft being connecting the con¬ 
vex side with wooden handle. 

u The most ingenious article in their 
tool-chest is a chalk-line. It is a 
wooden cup containing a spongy sub¬ 
stance steeped in India ink. This is 
pierced front and back, and the mark¬ 
ing line passes through it. The end 
of the line, is attached to a small awl; 
the other end of the line, after passing 
through the cup, is wound round a 
reel, not unlike a fishing-rod reel, 
which takes the place of the handle 
of the cup. To mark a line down a 
plank, the Japanese carpenter sticks 
the awl in at one end of the proposed 
line, carries the cup to the other, the 
line paying itself out as he does so ; he 
holds the line down to the board when 
he reaches the desired spot, strikes 
the mark, and then takes up his 
cup and reels up the line as he 
walks back to the spot where he 
inserted the awl. The process of pay- 






134 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ing out the line and reeling it up 
again both draw it through the ink 
supply in the cup and keep it ready for 
action. 


MANUFACTURE OF 1YORY COMBS, 
PIANO KEYS, Etc. 

The factories of Pratt, Reed & Co., 
located on the road to Chester, Conn., 
are owned by the same company that 
manufacture under the same name in 
Meriden. The company is a consoli¬ 
dation of three rival concerns that 
united under this name in the year 
1863. It has a capital of $175,000. 
The buildings in Deep River are located 
on a lot of eight to ten acres. This 
and the Meriden establishment com¬ 
bined makes this the largest concern 
of the kind in America. In Meriden 
are manufactured the melodeon key 
boards and the ebony sharps for pianos 
and melodeons. The company now 
employ some seventy hands at Deep 
River. 

The elephants 1 tusks are purchased 
by this company from importers resid¬ 
ing in Salem, Mass., and Providence, 
R. I., to whom most all the ivory that 
reaches this country is consigned. The 
price paid has ranged from two-fifty to 
five dollars per pound, and now stands 
at about three dollars per pound. As 
this concern alone uses 100,000 pounds 
of ivory per annum, it will be readily 
seen that elephant hunting may be as 
profitable as it is said to be exciting. 
The tusks received vary from six to 
nine feet in length, the former being 
about the average. They have been 
found weighing about ninety pounds, 
though the average is but seventy 
pounds. The tusks are hollow in the 
center up to the point where they 
grow out of the heads, while a small 
nerve runs clear to the tip of the tusk. 


The first operation is “junking,” 
when the tusk is sawed into semi¬ 
circular blocks and again sawed either 
into ilie length of a comb or of a 
piano-forte key, as may be required. 
The outer u bark 11 that encrusts the 
ivory is then hewn off, when the blocks 
are marked with a lead pencil, as re¬ 
quired, according to the size of the 
combs. A fine saw, carefully watched, 
then cuts off the strips for the combs. 
For piano-forte keys, the junks are 
hewn on a machine, and then a split 
saw cuts them into blocks, whence 
they are again sawed into the required 
sizes for “ heads 11 and “ tails.” Of the 
combs, the ends are next rounded, and 
the ivory partially dried in fire clays, 
so that they can be turned in the ivory 
planing machine invented by this firm. 
A very neat sorting machine next sorts 
them into sizes of from one, two to 
four inches, and deposits them in boxes 
which are revolved by an endless 
leather belt. The combs, after being 
planed and sorted, are bleached in the 
bleach houses (alluded to hereafter), 
and then polished on a smooth wheel 
on which a cotton cloth with some 
unknown dressing (which has been sub¬ 
stituted for buckskin) has been placed. 
The wheels have to receive this dress¬ 
ing after each three dozen combs have 
been polished. The combs are then 
sized, when comes the most delicate 
operation of all, sawing the teeth. 
This is done with imported saws most 
finely tempered, and as thin as the 
thinnest paper — so thin that they cut 
from forty to seventy teeth to the inch. 
Though the same are imported, their 
teeth are cut by the company’s me¬ 
chanics, and most delicate workmen 
they have to be. The combs are then 
dampened, when they are pointed on a 
very curious machine with very rapid 
motion. This completes the combs, 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


135 


which are then packed up according 
to their sizes. 

The piano ivory after being sawed 
into heads and tails, as spoken of, are 
soaked, next washed off by hand, then 
put into trays and taken to the bleach 
houses, which are constructed like long 
green houses. The trays are hung up 
directly under the glasses, where the 
ivory is exposed for from eight weeks 
to six months, according to the weather 
and sunlight. The combs are exposed 
in this way after being sawed, for from 
four to five weeks. The combs slide 
into the trays, while the piano forte 
keys are held by pins. After one side 
of the ivory is thoroughly bleached 
the trays are reversed, and the other 
side exposed. The bleach houses are 
five in number and very large, from 
160 to 600 feet long. One of them, 
however, is used as a lumber store¬ 
house. Of late years this company 
have manufactured its own piano forte 
key-boards. Of frames for these they 
manufacture ten different styles for as 
man}" different piano forte manufac¬ 
turers, embracing some of the most 
prominent in the country. For one 
firm alone they make 100 sets per 
month. In this department of the 
factory is a very neat machine for 
morticing and broaching. In these 
frames are used black walnut, cherry, 
pine, and some ash. The key-board 
itself is of pine, except the front and 
back slips, which are of bass wood. 
Next to the frame making and cutting, 
comes the board fitting. The ivory 
laying is next done, then the u lush¬ 
ing,” which last operation is only gone 
through with when desired. The man¬ 
ner of it is as follows : — The front of 
the key-board is in front of the oper¬ 
ator, with the mortice in which the 
pipe plays directly before him; into 
the mortice he forces a little silk cush¬ 


ion to prevent a rattle. The key-board 
is next placed in a machine which 
throws a very fine white oily dust, 
which would do admirably for snow in 
amateur theatricals. The sawing oper¬ 
ation necessary to separate the different 
parts of the key-board are next care¬ 
fully prepared, and the edges of the 
keys filed, after which the sharps are 
separated from the keys and then but¬ 
toned. 

The keys are next put on the frame 
and squared. The ebony sharps (made 
at Meriden) are then put on and the 
whole wiped off and balanced. The 
final operation is to fill the edges and 
“ease” the boards, which are then 
ready for the market. 

The piano forte key-boards are made 
entirely to fill orders. This depart¬ 
ment of the business is but a few years 
old. Of combs this firm turns out 500 
dozen a day here, and the same number 
at Meriden. 


ORIGIN OF THE WORD YANKEE. 

There is no question or mystery 
about the origin and meaning of the 
word u Yankee.” It is older than the 
New England colonies, and was used 
by Samosetin his historical “ Welcome 
Englishmen.” “Welcome Yenghese” 
was what he actually said, “Yenghese” 
being the nearest approach the Indian 
tongue could make to the word “ En¬ 
glish.” Yankees and English are synon¬ 
ymous terms, and the word was applied 
to the Northern English colonists by 
the Indians to distinguish them from 
the French on one side and the Dutch 
on the other. The latter people soon 
adopted the term, and it was readily ac¬ 
cepted by the New Englanders them¬ 
selves. It was never considered a term 
of reproach, but rather one of honor, 
by the colonists. 









136 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


“PASS THE PEPPER” 


Of all the aromatics which are par¬ 
taken of by man as flavorers to his 
food there is none more common than 
pepper, and when unadulterated, its 
tendency, in small quantities, is rather 
to aid digestion than otherwise. The 
three important peppers commonly 
found on the dinner table are white, 
black, and cayenne, all natives of the 
the tropics. They are much used (to 
stimulate digestion) by their human 
brethren — those hot and choleric old 
nabobs who confer a benefit on the 
world by living in hot climates far 
removed from the haunts of civilized 
life. Thus the chow chows, curries, 
and other hot dishes so relished by 
your yellow-faced East and West 
Indians owe their flavor and pungency 
to the amount of pepper they contain. 

There is one variety of the genus 
Piper to which the white and black 
peppers belong (cayenne being a mem¬ 
ber of the genus Capsicum — called 
so, by the bye, from a Greek word 
which signifies to bite); this variety is 
a great favorite with housekeepers and 
cooks, and has received from them the 
flattering name of “allspice,” as it 
combines in itself the flavor of cloves, 
nutmeg, and cinnamon; it grows 
plentiful^ in Jamaica and other 
American islands, where it was first 
discovered by the Spaniards, who gave 
it the name of Pimenta de Jamaica. 
The French call it the “round clove.” 

Black pepper is cultivated in large 
quantities in Malacca, Java, and espe¬ 
cially Sumatra, the trade of these 
places being almost exclusively in 
these spices. A pepper garden during 
the ripening of the pod is a lovely 
sight, being a large plot marked out 
into regular squares of six feet, in each 
of which are planted young trees 


called chinkareens , that serve as props 
to the pepper vines. When the prop 
has reached twelve feet high, it is cut 
off and the vines planted two to each 
prop. A vine is three years in coming 
to maturity, and the fruit, which grows 
in long spikes, is three or four months 
in ripening. The berries are plucked as 
soon as ripe, and spread on mats upon 
the ground to dry, by which process 
they become black and shriveled, and 
are imported here as black pepper. In 
this city, and distributed throughout 
the States, are many mills where pep¬ 
per is ground, and, we are sorry to say, 
it is often sophisticated with burnt 
crust of bread and other adulterations. 

The Sumatrans once did a genuine 
Yankee trick in connection with pep¬ 
per, which is worth recording. They 
steeped the pepper corns in water until 
their shells or outer coat burst, and 
then drying them without it, sold for 
three times the price of the black, as a 
different species, to the East India 
Company, who then monopolized the 
pepper trade. The company, having 
swallowed the story, made the buyers 
swallow it too. and ever since we have 
had the two peppers, white and black, 
both coming from the same plant, but 
one possessing its coat and the other 
being deprived of that useful append¬ 
age, aud so weakened in its pungency. 
The effect of pepper is stimulative and 
carminative, and as a condiment it 
seems not only to add a peculiar flavor 
of its own to dishes into whose compo¬ 
sition it may enter, but also to develop 
the flavor of the other ingredients. 
Taken in small quantities, it warms 
the whole system, but if a large dose 
be placed upon the palate, it seems to 
burn the tongue and throw the whole 
mouth into a perfect glow. As a med¬ 
icine it has been proved beneficial in 
cases of vertigo, paralysis and inter- 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


137 


mittents. The pungency depends on 
the presence of an aromatic resin, 
which can be extracted by ether and 
alcohol, and partially by water. 

Cayenne was first noticed on the 
coast of Guinea, and has been gener¬ 
ally used by the natives of those 
climes in which it grows as a strength- 
ener for the stomach. It is an extra¬ 
ordinary fact, but still true, that 
although savages may be unacquainted 
with the polite arts, they are generally 
well informed upon the subject of 
gastronomy, and to suit their some¬ 
times peculiar tastes, they generally 
discover all the edible good things 
which their native soil affords. It 
cannot be denied that hunger and the 
palate are great equalizers, and the 
stomach, much as we abhor gluttony, 
does much for civilization ; in fact, his 
stomach and its wants distinguish man 
from the brutes, for, as Dr. Kitchener 
correctly observed, “Man is the only 
cooking animal. 1 ' 

The cayenne of commerce is the 
grain or seed of the capsicum ground 
and mixed with flour and then baked 
into little cakes in an oven; these are 
again broken up and mixed with more 
flour and placed in jars for sale. The 
free or plant is very beautiful, and forms 
a great ornament to a garden, but it is 
very tender and requires much care. 
It is more pungent than either white 
or black peppers, and is often adulter¬ 
ated with logwood and mahogany 
sawdust and red lead; this latter can, 
however, be easily detected by placing 
a spoonful carefully in a glass of water, 
when, should it contain any red lead, 
it will from its specific gravity quickly 
drop to the bottom while the cayenne 
will sink but slowly. A very pleasant 
drink may be made for these cold 
winter nights, and one that is healthy 
too, from pepper. Here is the recipe : 


Place three or four lumps of sugar 
with half a teaspoonful of pepper in a 
tumbler and fill up with hot water; 
when the sugar is dissolved, drink. It 
is not only pleasant to the palate, but 
warms the whole body more effectually 
and quicker than any spirits. Those 
of our readers who try our recipe once 
will often, during the coming winter, 
when the fire burns low, and they feel 
chilly generally, exclaim in the 
language of our caption, “Pass the 
pepper. 11 — Scientific American. 


SOME FACTS ABOUT THE EAR. 


Never pick or scratch the canals of 
the ear with pins, pencils or scoops. 
It will eventually cause troublesome 
inflammation and subsequent deafness. 

Do not try to wash the canals of the 
ears with so-called aurilaves, or end of 
the towel, or even with the fingers. 
Such treatment produces impaction of 
the wax and is not necessary for 
cleanliness. 

Do not try to remove the wax with 
the ear scoop. There is danger of 
injuring the drum-heads, or of causing 
inflammation. Have some competent 
person inspect the parts with an 
ear-mirror, and move the wax with 
the syringe, charged with warm water. 
This is the best way to remove any 
foreign body from the external audito¬ 
ry canal. Only occasionally other 
means are required. The parts should 
always be under inspection. 

A discharge from the ear is always 
fraught with danger. It should never 
be neglected. Occasionally it stops 
itself, but frequently leads to dangerous 
complications, such as inflammation of 
the brain, disease of the surrounding 
bone, and may set up inflammation in 
other parts of the body, as the lungs, 
bowels, etc. 







138 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


The middle ear, from which the dis¬ 
charge generally comes is small, but 
is exceedingly vulnerable. It is sur¬ 
rounded on all sides by vital organs, 
the partition wall being thin. Syring¬ 
ing with warm water in such cases is 
absolutely essential and unaccompanied 
by any danger whatever. 

Under proper treatment there is no 
danger of u driving in” the discharge, 
which is neither a “healthy sign ” nor 
a “ safety valve.” 

Never keep the canal blocked up 
with cotton, or anything else, while 
discharge is present. 

The ear requires fresh air and is not 
likely to become more inflamed by 
its admittance, unless exposed to a 
direct draft, which should be avoided. 

Black sheep’s wool has no healing 
virtue. 

Wetting the hair, especially when it 
is long, and allowing it to dry slowly, 
often produces deafness and aggra¬ 
vates it when already present. 


DIAMONDS. 


The diamond occupies the highest 
rank among precious stones, and 
possesses an intrinsic value in almost 
every part of the globe. Diamonds 
follow the same laws which govern 
the value of every other commodity 
— those of supply and demand ; and 
as the production of these gems has 
diminished, and the number of wearers 
greatly increased, the price has gone 
on augmenting, and no doubt will 
continue to augment. Since 1849, 
a steady rise of from five to ten per 
cent, per annum has taken place in 
consequence of the production of the 
diamond mines decreasing. India and 
Brazil have been the two great sources 
of supply, but the mines of the former 
are now nearly extinct, and diamonds 


which were found there take the trade 
name of “ old mine ” stones. The 
rough diamond generally loses fifty per 
cent, of its weight in cutting and 
polishing. They can be cloven with 
facility in a direction parallel with the 
octahedron or dodecahedron; or, to 
use the lapidaries’ expression, u splits 
easily with the grain.” This quality 
much assists the otherwise tedious 
operation of cutting or grinding the 
diamond, particularly where it is de¬ 
sired to get rid of flaws. Diamonds, 
when perfect, should be clear as a drop 
of the purest water. The terms, first 
water, second water, etc., etc., mean 
only first and second quality. When 
a diamond has a very decided color> 
such as blue, red, green, etc., it is 
called a fancy stone, and will bring a 
most exorbitant price. The diamond 
cuts glass with great facility, but not 
every stone can be used for that pur¬ 
pose. It is required to find one whose 
angles are naturally acute. These 
stones are called “ glaziers.” 

The diamond is not acted upon by 
any acid, but is a combustible body, 
becoming entirely consumed when 
exposed to a very strong degree of 
heat. In spite of its hardness, it is 
capable of being reduced to powder, 
and the mistaken idea which used to 
prevail, and even now exists, that the 
best test of the reality was to put it 
on an anvil and strike it with a ham¬ 
mer, when, if genuine, it either broke 
the hammer or buried itself in the 
anvil, has been the cause of the loss of 
many fine gems, which were either 
crushed or thrown away as valueless. 
The origin of the word carat weight is 
from an Arabic word, “Kuara,” the 
name of the seeds of the pod-bearing 
plant, growing on the gold coast of 
Africa, which are almost invariably of 
an equal weight, and were formerly 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


139 


used for weighing against the grains 
or dust of gold. This weight was 
adopted in Hindostan, and has thence 
spread all over the world. Large dia¬ 
monds, as may be supposed, are of 
very rare occurrence. Diamond-cutting 
forms one of the principal branches 
of industry in Amsterdam, and more 
than fifteen-sixteenth of the diamonds 
found are now cut there. The work, 
as may be supposed, demands the 
greatest nicety. The purest stone, cut 
by unskillful hands, remains a dull 
mass, without life or lustre, and, in 
fact, on the regularity of the facets 
and the perfect polish, depends the 
value of the stone, nearly as much as 
on the original material. The double 
cut brilliant is the most 1 common form 
at the present day, but for very small 
stones, the single cut displays to best 
advantage. A stone that is well cut 
should have a very thin edge at the 
girdle; and any overweight or sub¬ 
stance to make a diamond heavier, 
only detracts from its play or beauty. 

To select a perfect stone, first, it 
must be perfectly free from the faint¬ 
est tinge of color of any sort; — 
from any flaws, specks and marks, or 
fissures in any part; must be bright 
and lively, and free from what is tech¬ 
nically called 1 milk, 1 or ‘ salt, 1 which 
are semi-opaque in the body of the 
stone. In order to ascertain this, it 
is sufficient to breathe on the stone, 
when any defect or color will be appa¬ 
rent. It is necessary to look at a stone 
on all sides, as a defect may exist 
which is not visible in looking at the 
table. 

Second, the stone must be well pro¬ 
portioned, and properly cut. From 
the table to the girdle must be one- 
third, and from the girdle to the culet 
two-thirds of the whole thickness of 
the stone. The size of the table must 


be four-ninths of the extreme size of 
the stone, and the culet must be one- 
fifth of the size of the table. These 
rules are given as the highest standard 
test, but so few stones are found that 
are really perfect, that for all commer¬ 
cial purposes, any imperfection that is 
not visible to the naked eye, passes for 
a perfect gem. 


FAMOUS DIAMONDS. 

A very appreciable proportion of the 
wealth of the world is at present rep¬ 
resented by diamonds. Every consid¬ 
erable stone has its name, history and 
locality well settled. When an addi¬ 
tion to the catalogue is made necessary 
by the acquisition of a new stone, its 
advent is immediately announced to 
the world, and it becomes at once a 
sort of social and civil power in 
society. This distinction is bestowed 
only on diamonds exceeding $20,000 
in value. 

The “ Koh-i-noor 11 is a very celebra¬ 
ted diamond belonging to the British 
crown. Its weight is 106 carats. It 
has a thrilling but somewhat ominous 
history. It was once the property of 
the great Aurungzebee. Its weight, 
when first seen by Tavernier, was 
about 700 carats. The “Regent, 11 
celebrated for having been so long 
concealed by a slave in a wound in his 
thigh, made for that purpose, weighs 
136 carats. The “ Braganza 11 diamond, 
in the crown of Portugal, is the larg¬ 
est known. It was found about 100 
years ago, in Brazil. Its weight is 
1830 carats ! Doubts have been thrown 
upon the genuineness of this stone, 
we know not with how much reason- 
The u Mattam 11 diamond, in possession 
of the Rajah, is said to be a very beau¬ 
tiful gem. Its weight is 367 carats. 
It is pear-shaped and indented at one 







140 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


end. It was found in tlie island of 
Borneo. The Dutch Governor of Ba¬ 
tavia is reported to have made an offer 
for this diamond of two ships of war, 
with their armaments complete, and 
$250,000 in money. The “ Orloff ” dia¬ 
mond, belonging to the Czar of Russia, 
is one of the most valuable known. 
It was once the eye an of Indian idol, 
and afterward one of the ornaments of 
the celebrated peacock throne of Nadia 
Shah. It was stolen by a French¬ 
man, and by him sold to Catherine 
II. for 450,000 rubles, a pension of 
20,000, and a patent of nobility. The 
“Cumberland” diamond was present¬ 
ed to the conqueror of Culloden b} r 
the City of London. It has since 
been claimed by Hanover, and restored 
to that country, whether by the Cum¬ 
berland family or the British Gov¬ 
ernment, we do no! know. Its 
value is $100,000. The “Sancy” dia¬ 
mond was once the property of 
Charles, Duke of Burgundy, who wore 
it in his hat. He lost it at the battle 
of Nancy, about the middle of the 
fifteenth century. It was found by a 
Swiss soldier, and sold to De Sancy, in 
whose family it remained about 100 
years. Henry III. of France borrowed 
it, to be used as a pledge. The servant 
who was sent to deliver it was robbed 
and murdered, but the diamond was 
found in his stomach by De Sancy, 
who had known his fidelity, and looked 
for it there. It became the property 
of James II. of England, and passed 
from his hands into those of the King 
of France, and was lost in the confu¬ 
sion of the Revolution. It was found, 
and became the property of Prince 
Demioff, who lately sold it for a large 
sum. 

The celebrated “Blue Diamond” 
was lost with the “Sancy,” and has 
never since been heard of. 


The w Florentine Brilliant” is a fine 
gem in the crown of the Emperor of 
Austria. The “Pitt” diamond, also 
called the “Regent,” was once the 
property of the Duke of Orleans; its 
weight was 410 carats. The “Piggot” 
is another historical diamond. The 
“Star of the South” is a large dia¬ 
mond, cut a few years since by the 
Costars, but we are not certain about 
the ownership. Its weight in rough 
stone was two hundred and fifty-four 
carats ; when finished it was less than 
one-half that weight 

Diamonds are not always colorless. 
Some are opalescent; some black. 
They have also been found red, pink 
and green. Those of a pure water 
transparency are the most valuable. 


THE BANANAS AND PLANTAINS OF 
THE TROPICS. 

Poets have celebrated the banana 
plant for its beauty, its luxuriance, the 
majesty of its leaves and the delicacy 
of its fruit; but never have they suffi¬ 
ciently praised the utility of this trop¬ 
ical product. Those who have never 
lived in southern countries are unable 
to appreciate its value. Some look 
even with indifference upon the gigan¬ 
tic clusters of this fruit, as they are 
unloaded from the steamers and sailing 
vessels; and yet they deserve special 
attention and admiration, for they are 
to the inhabitants of the torrid zone 
what potatoes are to those of the north 
temperate zone. 

The banana tree is one of the most 
striking illustrations of tropical fertil¬ 
ity and exuberance. A plant which, 
in a northern climate, would require 
many years to gain strength and size, 
is there the production of ten or 
twelve months. The native of the 
South plants a few grains, taken from 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


141 


an old tree, in a moist and sandy soil, 
along some river or lake ; they develop 
with the greatest rapidity, and at the 
end of ten months, the first crop may 
be gathered, though the clusters and 
bananas are yet small; but the follow¬ 
ing year one cluster alone will weigh 
some sixty or more pounds. Even in 
the South they are cut down when 
green, as they lose much of their flavor 
when left to ripen or soften on the 
tree. 

The trunk of the tree, if it may be 
so called, and which grows to the 
height of some fifteen feet, is formed 
only by the fleshy part of the large 
leaves, some of which attain a length 
of eighteen feet, and are two and a 
half feet width. While from an upper 
sprout you perceive the large yellow 
flowers, or already formed fruits, you 
see underneath a cluster which is bend¬ 
ing the tree by its weight. 

The plantain tree is much the same 
as the banana, with the difference, 
however, that its fruit cannot be eaten 
raw, like the banana’s, and that it is 
much larger in size. Almost every 
portion of the banana tree is useful. 
First of all, the nutritious fruit. The 
plantains when green and hard are 
boiled in water or with meat, like our 
potatoes, or they are cut in slices and 
fried in fat when they are soft and 
ripe. There is a singularity about the 
boiled plantain worthy of being men¬ 
tioned. Pork especially, and other 
meats are so exceedingly fat in the 
tropics that they would be most dis¬ 
gusting, or even impossible to eat with 
either bread or potato, but the plan¬ 
tain seems to neutralize or absorb all 
the greasy substance, and the fattest 
meat is thus eaten by natives and 
foreigners without the least incon¬ 
venience. 

Ripe bananas are mashed into a 


paste, of which the natives bake a sort 
of bread, which is very nourishing, 
though somewhat heavy. This paste, 
which contains much starch, can be 
dried, and thus kept for a length of 
time, which is of great service to 
mariners. The young sprouts are 
used and prepared like vegetables, and 
the fibrous parts of the stalks of the 
majestic leaves are used like manilla 
for ropes and coarse cloth. 

The utility of the leaves is a theme 
rich enough to fill a volume ; they are 
used to cover the huts, for table-cloths 
and napkins, or wrapping paper. The 
dough of bread, instead of being put 
in a pan, into the oven, is spread on a 
piece of plantain leaf; it will neither 
crisp nor adhere to the bread when 
taken out. The Indians of America 
carry all their products, such as maize, 
sugar, coffee, etc., in bags made of this 
leaf, which they know how to arrange 
so well, that they transport an “aroba,” 
or twenty-five pounds, any distance 
without a single grain escaping, and 
without any appliance other than a 
liana or creeper to tie it up with. As 
to the medicinal qualities of the leaves, 
they are numerous. Indeed a book 
has been written upon them. I speak, 
however, from my own experience. 
The young, yet unrolled leaves are 
superior to any salve or ointment. If 
applied to an inflamed part of the body 
the effect is soothing and cooling, or 
if applied to a wound or ulcer, they 
excite a proper healthy action, and 
afterwards completely heal the wound. 
Decoctions made of the leaves are used 
among the natives for various diseases. 

Since the beginning of the world 
this plant has ranked among the first 
in the Flora of Asia. The Christians 
of the Orient look upon it as the tree 
of Paradise which bore the forbidden 
fruit, and they think its leaves fur- 





142 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


nished the first covering to our original 
parents. According to other historians, 
the Adam’s fig was the plant, which 
the messengers brought from the 
promised land to Moses, who had sent 
them out to reconnoitre. u It is under 
the shade of the musa sapientium, that,” 
as recorded by Pliny, “ the learned In¬ 
dians seated themselves to meditate 
over the vicissitudes of life, and to talk 
over different philosophic subjects, and 
the fruit of this tree was their only 
food.” The Oriental Christians, up to 
the present date, regard the banana 
almost with reverence; their active 
fancy beholds in its center, if a cut is 
made transverse, the image of the 
cross, and they consider it a crime to 
use a knife in cutting the fruit. 

In the holy language of the Hindoo, 
the Sanscrit, the Adam’s fig is called 
“ modsha,” whence doubtless, the word 
u musa” is derived. It is generally be¬ 
lieved that the plant came from India 
to Egypt in the seventh century ; it 
still forms a most important article of 
commerce in the markets of Cairo and 
Alexandria. In the year 1516, the 
banana was brought to the West 
Indian Islands by a monk, since which 
time it has rapidly spread over the 
tropics of America, and is found to the 
twenty-fifth degree north and south of 
the equator. It is equally indispen¬ 
sable and is appreciated by the immi¬ 
grant and by the native as a beautifier 
of the landscape; affording shelter 
from the sun and rain, and giving 
bread to the children; for if every 
other crop should fail, the hungry na¬ 
tive looks up to the banana tree, like a 
merchant to his well-filled storehouse. 


The oldest stove, probably, in the 
United States is that which is still in 
use at the capitol in Richmond, Ya. 
It was made in England in 1770. 


WHERE AND HOW TIN IS OBTAINED. 


Tin is one of the most valuable of 
metals, and its use, already widely 
extended, constantly increases. In a 
pure state it possesses no properties 
injurious to health, and hence it enters 
largely into the construction of culi¬ 
nary utensils. Its ores are not so 
widely and generally distributed as the 
ores of iron, copper, and lead, but in 
certain localities immense deposits of 
this beautiful metal are found. 

One of the most celebrated of these 
localities is Cornwall, in England, 
where tin mines were worked before 
the invasion of the island by the 
Romans, and the mines of this district 
are the most important in the world. 
Tin ores of a very fine quality are also 
found on the Malay peninsula, Banca 
in Asia, and in Bohemia and Saxony 
in Europe. They also exist in Mexico 
and other localities in small quantities 
and of inferior quality. 

Tin ores are found in veins, or in 
detached masses in alluvial soils, where 
they have been carried by the action 
of water. The latter ores are hence 
called u stream tin.” The examination 
of the deposits of stream tin frequently 
leads to the discovery of the principal 
vein from which the broken masses of 
ore have drifted. 

When the ores are got out of the 
mines they are sorted by hand to 
separate the purer portions from the 
inferior qualities. The inferior por¬ 
tions thus separated are crushed in a 
stamping mill and washed with water 
to remove earthy matters. It is next 
roasted in a reverberatory furnace to 
expel arsenic and sulphur, which are 
nearly always found associated with 
tin ores. The heat in the roasting 
process expels these substances in the 
form of vapor, the arsenic almost 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


143 


wholly, and the sulphur partially. 
The remaining sulphur is mostly com¬ 
bined with copper in the form of a 
sulphate — blue vitrol. This is now 
removed by a leaching process which 
dissolves out the salt. 

The iron which the ores contain 
having by these processes been con¬ 
verted into the peroxide of iron, is 
next removed by washing. The tin 
oxide being considerably heavier than 
the iron oxide, the latter is carried off 
by a stream too feeble to carry off the 
oxide of tin. 

To get rid of the oxygen and the 
remains of silica still mixed with the 
ore is the next step. The washed ore 
being ready for reduction, it is mixed 
with from one-fifth to one-eighth of 
its weight of powdered anthracite or 
charcoal, the latter being by far the 
best, as it conveys no additional impu¬ 
rities to the tin. A small portion of 
lime is added as a flux and the whole is 
placed in the reducing furnace. The 
heat is slowly raised so that the oxygen 
of the ore combines with the carbon 
before the fusing point of the silica is 
reached. After five or six hours the 
heat is made very intense, and the 
silicious matters form a fluid slag which 
floats on the surface of the melted tin. 

The latter is now drawn off and cast 
into ingots, which are, however, still 
too impure to be marketable. 

The first step in the process of re¬ 
fining consists in what is termed 
u liquation .” This is performed by 
heating the ingots until the purer por¬ 
tions melt and run off, leaving behind 
an alloy which is remelted and forms 
an inferior quality, “block tin.” The 
purer portion being drawn off into a 
pan is kept in a gentle state of fusion 
for some time, and is stirred with sticks 
previously soaked in water. The steam 
generated from the water-soaked sticks 


escapes with considerable force and 
carries to the surface the dust, slag and 
other impurities, acting precisely like 
the air or water used in jiggling ma¬ 
chines for separating ores from their 
gangues. 

The finer portion of metal lies on 
the surface of the molten mass, db 
rectly beneath the floating slag, and 
this is often reheated to a temperature 
just below the point of fusion. Pure 
tin at this temperature becomes crys¬ 
talline, and is easily broken into small 
fragments called “grain tin.” 

The purest commercial tin is the 
celebrated Banca tin, brought from the 
island of Banca, which lies east of 
Sumatra. This tin is employed in the 
manufacture of the finest bells. It is 
almost chemically pure. English tin 
is more or less contaminated with ar¬ 
senic, iron and lead. 


ANCIENT USES OF CORK. 

There are some substances in the 
use of which we have not made much 
progress, partly from the fact that 
other materials have been discovered 
to supply their place, and partly from 
the substance itself possessing such 
palpable peculiarities that its earliest 
discoverers must have seen at once for 
what it was most applicable. This is 
the case with cork. The Romans used 
it as soles to put into their shoes to 
keep their feet warm and dry ; and as 
there were no high heels in those days, 
the ladies used it to make them appear 
tall. Camillus swam the Tiber with 
the aid of a cork jacket, fishermen 
used it as floats to their nets, and 
buoys to their anchors, and Pliny tells 
us that it was employed as stoppers to 
vessels of all kinds. The old Spaniards 
lined the walls of their houses with 







144 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


cork, because it kept them warm and 
prevented dampness ; and lastly, the 
Egyptians manufactured coffins of it, 
which, being lined Avith a resinous 
composition, preserved their dead from 
decay. The method employed in Por¬ 
tugal of cutting the bark and burning 
the outside, is the same to-day as it 
was one thousand years ago ; so that 
altogether, we can not say that we 
have done very much with cork 
that has not been done before. It is 
quite time that we made a start and 
discovered some new uses and applian¬ 
ces for this cheap and plentiful material. 


THE CORK TRADE. 

The Boston cork trade amounts to 
about one hundred and fifty thousand 
dollars per year. This branch of busi¬ 
ness, though suffering of course, in 
common with all others, from the 
influence of the panic, has not quite 
reached that dead level of stagnation 
from which some branches of trade are 
suffering. The raw material from 
which corks are manufactured is all 
imported, and, as a duty of five per 
cent, was placed upon this material 
about a year ago, the prices of corks 
have not partaken of the general 
downward tendency. Business in this 
line of trade is always more sluggish 
in the winter than summer, and a 
brisk trade is not expected at this sea¬ 
son of the year. The. sales of cork 
dealers are made to druggists, bottlers 
and retailers of beverages, and it will 
readily be seen that the orders which 
come from the last mentioned class of 
customers would be much greater in 
summer than in winter. Most of the 
corkwood comes from Spain, though 
an inferior quality is brought from 
other countries on the shores of the 
Mediterranean, especially from Sicily. 


This material is the bark of the cork¬ 
tree, so called, a tree of the oak species, 
none of which grow in this country. 
The bark is thick or thin, according to 
the age of the tree, and that which is 
used by cork manufacturers varies 
from half an inch to three inches in 
thickness. The exterior appearance of 
the bark does not differ much from the 
interior, and resembles the appearance 
of hemlock bark after being scraped 
somewhat, except the cork bark is con¬ 
siderably lighter in color. A cork-tree 
may be stripped of its bark completely, 
and a new bark will form in the course- 
of seven or eight years. The cork is 
made up of concentric bark layers in 
the same way the wood part of the 
tree is made up of concentric wood 
layers, and by ascertaining the number 
of layers the age of the bark or tree 
can be determined. The bark is filled 
with pores running from side to side, 
and for this reason the cork-manufac¬ 
turer so cuts it that these pores may 
not run lengthwise of the cork when 
it is made. The material is first cut 
into what are called straight corks, 
and tapering corks are made from 
these by paring one end. The corks 
are sorted into three qualities and are 
then ready for market. The raw 
material is bought by the pound, while 
the corks are sold by the gross. The 
bits of cork wasted in the manufacture 
are mixed with tar and sold for fuel. 


HUMAN ENDURANCE. 

During the Arctic voyages in search 
of Sir John Franklin, it was ascer¬ 
tained what a seaman can do in the 
way of traveling, carrying and drag¬ 
ging. The maximum weight proper 
per man was ascertained to be 220 lbs., 
and of that weight 3 lbs. per diem 
were consumed by each man for food 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


145 


and fuel —namely, 1 lb. of bread, 1 lb. 
of meat, while the other pound com¬ 
prised his spirits, tea, cocoa, sugar, 
tobacco and fuel for cooking. Upon 
this estimate it was found that, for a 
hundred days 1 journey, they could 
march ten miles per diem, and endure 
with impunity a temperature of 50 
degrees or 60 degrees below freezing 
point. 


LEAKAGE OF GAS-TAPS. 

Many people are annoyed by the 
slight leakage of gas-taps, causing an 
offensive odor deleterious to health in 
the apartments where they are placed, 
and also increasing their bills. In 
many cases they may easily remedy 
the evil without sending for a plumber 
or gas-fitter. To do this, they should 
turn off the gas back of the meter; 
then take out (a screw-driver is ail 
the tool required) the plug. Next, 
light a wax, sperm, or parffine candle, 
and drop the melted wax, sperm or 
paraffine upon the surface of the plug, 
till it is covered with a thin layer. 
Next screw in the tap, and in nine 
cases out of ten the leak will be 
stopped and remain stopped. 


EBON1ZED BLACK. 

Take 1 gallon of strong vinegar, 2 
pounds of extract of logwood, -j- pound 
green copperas, i pound of China blue, 
and 2 ounces of nutgall. Put these in 
an iron pot and boil them over a slow 
fire till they are well dissolved. When 
cool, the mixture is ready for use. 
Add to the above i pint of iron rust, 
obtained by steeping iron filings in 
strong vinegar. The above makes a 
perfect jet black, equal to the best 
black ebony. This recipe is a valuable 
one. 


VALUE OF THE SMELLING FACULTY. 


In Sir W. Temple’s essay on “ Health 
and Long Life, 11 he says : — 

“Fumigation, or the use of scents, 
is not, that I know of, at all practiced 
in our modern physic, nor the power 
and virtues of scents considered among 
us, yet they may have as much power 
to do good, for ought I know, as harm, 
and contribute to health as well as 
disease, which is too much felt by 
experience in all that are infectious, 
and by the operation of some poisons 
that are received by the smell. How 
reviving, as w r ell as pleasing, some 
scents of herbs and flowers are, is 
obvious to all; how great virtues they 
may have in diseases, especially of the 
head, is known to few, but may easily 
be conjectured by any thinking man. 

u I remember that, walking in a long 
gallery of the Indian House of Amster¬ 
dam, where vast quantities of mace, 
cloves and nutmegs were kept in great 
open chests all along one side of the 
room, I found something so reviving 
by the perfumed air, that I took notice 
of it to the company with me, num¬ 
bering many persons, and they all 
were sensible of the same effect, which 
is enough to show the power of smells, 
and the operations both upon the health 
and humor.” 

Of our five senses, that of smelling has 
been treated with comparative indiffer¬ 
ence. However, as knowledge pro¬ 
gresses, the various faculties with 
which the Creator has thought proper, 
in his wisdom, to endow man, will 
become developed, and the faculty 
of smelling will meet with its share 
of tuition, as well as sight, hearing, 
touch and taste. 

St. Paul tells the Corinthians u that 
there should be no schism in the body, 
but that the members should have 










146 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the same care one for another. And 
whether one member suffer, all the 
members suffer with it; or one mem- 
ber be honored, all the members 
rejoice in it; nay, much more those 
members which seem to be more feeble, 
are necessary. If the whole body 
were an eye, where were the hearing ? 
If the whole were an ear, where were 
the smelling ? 11 These arguments ap¬ 
pear so conclusive in favor of a just 
and proper estimation of the value of 
smelling that it would seem impossible 
to neglect it without bodily suffering 
as a consequence. 

Practically, the author has always 
found it so. Among the lower order, 
bad smells are little heeded; in fact, 
u noses have they, but they smell 
not; ” and the result is a continuance 
to live in an atmosphere laden with 
poisonous odors, whereas, any one with 
the least power of smelling retained, 
shuns such odors, as they would any 
other thing that is vile or pernicious. 
In the public schools “ common 
things ” are now being taught ; to 
complete the idea, youth must be in¬ 
structed that when the nose is offended, 
the body will indirectly suffer. If they 
are not taught to know by name every 
odor that they smell, they can at least 
be made familiar with the deadly 
effects of sulphuretted hydrogen, and 
others of the putrescent gases, and so 
avoid them in future life. 


AMBER 


This substance, though classed 
among minerals, is of vegetable origin, 
bearing evidence of having been in a 
fluid or viscid state. It is rather heav¬ 
ier than water, usually transparent 
when polished, but occasionally opaque 
or clouded; of a resinous taste, and 
when burning gives off a white, aro¬ 


matic smoke. It possesses electric 
properties, which are strongly devel¬ 
oped by friction, and which gave the 
name to the science of electricity, from 
elektrou , the Greek word for amber. 
It is much less esteemed in Europe 
than among Oriental nations, where 
the demand for ornamental purposes 
is very great. There it is fashioned 
into necklaces, ear-rings, bracelets, 
also into snuff boxes and the most 
costly kind of pipes. At various times 
the origin of amber has been a matter 
of dispute among naturalists, some 
describing it as an animal substance, 
secreted by an ant inhabiting pine 
forests; others maintaining it to be a 
fossil mineral of antedeluvian origin ; 
and others again with greater truth, 
imagining it to be a resin from the pine 
and afterwards solidifying. This idea 
was entertained by Pliny, who speaks 
of amber as a resinous juice oozing 
from old pines and firs, and discharged 
by them into the sea. According to 
the recent researches of Goppert, am¬ 
ber is nothing more than an indurated 
resin, derived from various trees of the 
family coniferse; which resin is found 
in a like condition in all zones, because 
its usual original depositories, viz., beds 
of brown coal, have been formed every¬ 
where under similar circumstances. 
A convincing proof that amber was 
once fluid is afforded bv the fact that 

4 / 

insects, leaves, drops of clear water, or 
portions of metal and sand are some¬ 
times found enclosed in it. The in¬ 
sects are sometimes entire, but their 
detached legs and wings show there 
was a hard struggle to escape from the 
viscid mass. Bees, wasps, gnats, spi¬ 
ders and beetles have been observed in 
specimens; but the species more re¬ 
semble insects of tropical countries 
than of the temperate zone. This 
curious circumstance of the inclosure 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


147 


of insects is often taken advantage of 

o 

by dishonest dealers, who imitate it in 
common copal, which closely resem¬ 
bles amber and is often sold as the 
finest quality. 

Amber is generally found in rounded 
shapes, varying in size from a small 
nut to that of a man’s head; but 
the latter is very rare. Its value in¬ 
creases greatly with the size; thus, a 
piece weighing a pound would bring 
fifty dollars, but one of fifteen pounds 
would be thought cheap at five thous¬ 
and dollars. Amber is chiefly obtained 
on sea coasts, after storms, when it is 
either picked up on the beach or sought 
after by men who walk up to their 
necks in the waves, with long poles to 
which nets are attached ; or it is gath¬ 
ered from precipitous cliffs. The most 
abundant supply is obtained in East 
Prussia, along the Baltic Sea, between 
Memel and Dantzig, and especially on 
the shore near Konigsberg, and from 
Grossdirscheim to Pillan. It has also 
been found in Poland, Saxony, Siberia 
and Greenland; also in England near 
Norfolk, and on the Yorkshire coast. 
By sinking pits in sand and clay for¬ 
mations small quantities are occasion¬ 
ally procured on sandy downs. The 
coarser sorts are used in making dura¬ 
ble varnishes; also by the action of 
nitric acid the substance called artifi¬ 
cial musk is made. The largest pieces 
in the world are in the Royal Museum 
at Dresden. 

Amoer at present forms one of the 
most lucrative articles of commerce 
with Turkey, where the greater part of 
the European article is sold ; but con¬ 
siderable quantities are also purchased 
and forwarded to this country. It is 
estimated that the revenue derived by 
Prussia from her trade in this article 
amounts to twenty thousand dollars 
per annum. 


KING OF JERSEY. 


The origin of the allusion to New 
Jersey as a foreign country is said to 
be as follows: 

After the downfall of the First 
Napoleon, his brother Joseph, who had 
been King of Spain, and his nephew, 
Prince Murat, son of the King of Italy, 
sought refuge in this country, and 
brought much wealth with them, 
Joseph Bonaparte wished to build a 
palatial residence, but did not desire 
to become a citizen, as he hoped to 
return to Europe. To enable him as 
an alien to hold real estate required 
a special act of the Legislature. He 
tried to get one passed for his benefit 
in several States, but failed. He was 
much chagrined especially because 
Pennsylvania refused. After this he 
applied to the New Jersey Legislature, 
which body granted both him and 
Murat the privilege of purchasing 
land. They bought a tract at Bor- 
dentown, and built magnificent dwell¬ 
ings, and fitted them up in the most 
costly manner. Rare paintings, statu¬ 
ary, &c., were profuse, and selected 
with care, and the grounds were laid 
out with exquisite taste. Joseph 
Bonaparte’s residence was, perhaps, the 
finest in America. Thousands of peo¬ 
ple visited it from all parts of the 
country, and were treated courteously. 
He was profuse with his money, and 
gave a great impetus to business in 
the small town. The Philadelphians 
finding he had apparently no end of 
money, and that he had used it to 
benefit business generally, regretted, 
when it was too late, that they had 
refused to let him locate among them¬ 
selves ; and, to hide their mortification, 
would always taunt Jersey men with 
having a King — with importing the 
King of Spain to rule over them — 





148 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


they were called Spaniards and foreign¬ 
ers on this account. But these taunts 
harmed no one, as the Jerseymen lost 
nothing by their alluring him to settle 
among them, and the term “foreigner’’ 
jokingly applied to Jerseymen, has 
come down to us long after its origin 
has been forgotten, except by a few 
men of the past generation. Many 
3 7 ears ago — during the reign of Louis 
Phillippe, we believe — both Bonaparte 
and Murat found they could safely 
return to Europe, and they sold out 
and returned. 


LOSS OF THE FIRST STEAMER ON 
THE ATLANTIC. 

The first steamer ever lost on the 
Atlantic was the President, a steamer 
in size and dimensions much resem¬ 
bling her consort, the British Queen. 
She had two funnels, and sat high out 
of water. She made but three voyages 
across the Atlantic. Her first trip out 
to America was a tedious one. On her 
return passage, which commenced on 
the 2d of November, 1840, she encoun¬ 
tered very severe weather, and after 
being out three days, during which 
time she had consumed a large por 
tion of her coal, and made but very 
little way, she was obliged to re¬ 
turn to New York to obtain a fresh 
supply of fuel. On the second at¬ 
tempt she made Liverpool after a 
rough and protracted passage of sev¬ 
enteen days. Her outward voyage to 
the United States in February, 1841, 
was her last. On the 10th of March 
of that year, the President left New 
York for Liverpool, with twenty-three 
passengers on board, and up to this 
day no satisfactory intelligence has 
been received regarding her fate. The 
only ship that reported having seen 
her was a Portuguese brig, which, on 


23d April, 1841, while in lat. 31 N. 
and long. 40 W., saw a very large 
steamer under sails going at the rate 
of three or four miles an hour. No 
smoke issued from the funnels, and 
the paddle wheels were not in motion. 
The captain of the brig saw the 
steamer both on that and the follow¬ 
ing day, and even approached within 
three or four miles of her while pur¬ 
suing his own homeward route. She 
did not hail the brig, nor did she ap¬ 
pear to be at all in a disabled state. 
A British man-of-war and two Portu¬ 
gese vessels were sent to cruise in 
search of the President, but without 
success, and all hope for her safety 
was abandoned; and so ended the 
career of this pioneer of trans-Atlantic 
steam companies. The President was 
built at Blackwell, England, b} 7 the 
British and American Steam Naviga¬ 
tion Company. 


THE FIRST SCREW STEAMER. 

The first screw steamer was built at 
Bristol, England, by the Great West¬ 
ern Steam Navigation Company, in 
1839. It was called the Great Britain, 
and was built of iron, and propelled 
by means of an archimedean screw. It 
was originally intended to be a paddle- 
steamer, but the company having been 
unable to induce any forge-master to 
undertake the forging required for the 
paddle-shafts, necessity compelled the 
adoption of the screw-propeller. Al¬ 
though she was begun in 1839, and 
was so far finished as to be launched 
on July 19th, 1843. she was impris¬ 
oned in Cumberland Hock, Bristol, for 
several months, owing to the locks 
being narrower than the ship. After 
the locks being widened, she was on 
December 12tli, 1844, released, and 
early in 1845, steamed round to London 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


149 


on a trial-trip, proving her to be a 
very swift boat. Her dimensions were: 
Length, 274.2 feet; breadth, 48.2 feet; 
depth, 31.5 feet; 6 masts; gross ton¬ 
nage, 2,975 tons ; engines, 1,000 horse 
power, driving a six-bladed propeller 
of solid iron, 15 feet 6 inches in diame¬ 
ter. She made at that time but two 
passages across the Atlantic. 


THRILLING INCIDENT IN THE LIFE 
OF AN INVENTOR. 

uPolian Pianos .— A correspondent 
in the National Intelligencer (D. C.) 
notices the efforts that were made some 
years ago by 0. M. Coleman, the 
inventor of the iEolian Attachment, 
to direct attention to it, among the 
musical circles of London, and con¬ 
cludes with the following anecdote : — 

‘‘But to bring my letter to a close. 
After Coleman had obtained his 
European patents, and his invention 
had attained the highest point in the 
estimation of the public, he still found 
a 4 lion in the way.’ The celebrated 
Thalberg, then and yet justly regard¬ 
ed as the first pianist in the world, 
who was then on the Continent, had 
not yet seen or heard the instrument. 
Many eminent musicians, and especial¬ 
ly the piano manufacturers, stood 
aloof until Thalberg should give his 
opinion. Coleman felt that the fate 
of his invention hung upon the fiat of 
the dreaded Thalberg. It was — ‘Wait 
till Thalberg comes,’ and 4 If Thalberg 
says so and so, then, 1 &c., until the 
very name of Thalberg became hateful. 
The great master arrived in London at 
last, and a day was appointed for his 
examination of the instrument. A 
large room was selected, into which 
were admitted a number of the first 
musical artists. 

“ Benedict sat down and played in 


his best style. Thalberg stood at a dis¬ 
tance, with his arms folded and back 
turned. He listened for a time in that 
position, and then turned his face 
towards the instrument. He moved 
softly across the floor until he stood 
by the side of Benedict, where he 
again stopped and listened. An occa¬ 
sional nod of the head was all the 
emotion he betrayed. Suddenly, while 
Benedict was in the very midst of a 
splendid sonata, he laid his hand upon 
his arm, and, with a not very gentle 
push, said, ‘ Get off that stool!’ Seat¬ 
ing himself, he dashed out in his inim¬ 
itable style, and continued to play for 
some time without interruption, elec¬ 
trifying Coleman and the other auditors 
by an entirely new application of the 
invention. Suddenly he stopped, and, 
turning to Benedict, requested him to 
get a certain piece of Beethoven’s from 
the library. This w r as done, and Thal¬ 
berg played it through. Then, strik¬ 
ing his instrument with his hand and 
pointing to the music he said :— 4 This 
is the very instrument Beethoven had 
in his mind when he wrote that piece. 
It has never been played before !’ 

“ The next day Coleman sold his 
patent right for a sum that enabled 
him to take his place among million- 
aires. 


LEAD. 


When this metal was first used by 
man, no one can tell. It is known to 
have been in common use among the 
Romans, who sheathed the bottoms of 
their ships with it. At that time lead 
was twenty-four times the price it is 
now. The uses of lead are very nu¬ 
merous, such as for covering buildings, 
for water pipes, for dyeing and calico 
printing, in making glass for glazing 
porcelain, for refining gold and silver, 








150 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


for pigments. White lead, red lead 
and yellow chrome, are known to 
everybody. The application of lead as 
a cosmetic is somewhat curious. The 
Roman ladies were wont to “paint” 
with ceruse (oxyd of lead). Plautus, an 
old poet, introduces a waiting-woman 
refusing to give her mistress either 
ceruse or rouge, because, in the true 
spirit of a flatterer, she thought her 
quite handsome enough without it. 
The best hair dyes are made with 
lead. 

The quantity of sheet lead used for 
wrapping tea, tobacco and perfumery 
goods is enormous. It is remarkable 
that this metal, when dissolved in an 
acid, has the property of imparting a 
saccharine taste to the fluid. Thus, 
the common ascetate of lead is always 
called “ sugar of lead.” It Avas, per¬ 
haps, on this account that the Greeks 
and Romans used sheet lead to neutral¬ 
ize the acidity of bad Avine — a practice 
which now is happily not in use, since 
it has been found that all combinations 
of lead are poisonous. Lead will take 
off the rancidity of oil, and on this 
account it is much valued by watch¬ 
makers for making their lubricating 
oil. The alloys of lead, Avhich we call 
pewter, solder, and others, are so essen¬ 
tial in every-day life that we should 
be in a regular “fix” Avithout them. 
“ As heavy as lead ” is a proverb which 
brings to our mind its weighty quality, 
which is of great importance, for it 
enables us to ascertain the depths of 
the ocean; and without we could do 
this, how could Ave lay down the tele¬ 
graph cables ? How ascertain the 
presence of those dangerous banks 
which upset the vehicles of the mighty 
deep ? Thus Ave perceive that one 
material is subservient to another, till 
that great unity is produced Avhich we 
call the world.— Septimus Piesse. 


MANAGEMENT OF GOLD FISH. 


It is said that gold fish may be kept 
ten or twelve years (their average 
period of existence,) in vessels by the 
following precautions : 

1. Allow not more than one fish to 
a quart of water. 

2. Use the same kind of Avater, 
whether spring or river water, and 
change it daily in summer, every other 
day in Avinter. 

3. Use shallow rather than deep 
vessels, with small pebbles at the bot¬ 
tom (to be kept clean), and keep them 
in the shade and in a cool part of the 
room. 

4. Use a small net rather than the 
hand Avhile changing the Avater. 

5. Feed them with cracker, yolk of 
egg, lettuce, flies, etc., rather than with 
bread, and then only every third or 
fourth day and but little at a time. 

6. Do not feed them at all from 
No\ T ember to the end of February, and 
but little during the three following 
months. 


PLATINUM. 

The heayiest and the lightest sub¬ 
stances with Avhich we are acquainted 
possess the properties which chemists 
recognize as “ metallic.” The lightest 
substance we knoAv is hydrogen and 
although a gas is yet presumed, with 
good reason, to be a volatile metal. 
Platinum is I’emarkable as being the 
heaviest of all the elements which con¬ 
stitute the Avorld. If we take a certain 
bulk of lead weighing one pound, and 
the same bulk of platinum, Ave shall 
find that the latter will Aveigli more 
than one pound and three quarters. It 
is noAv about a hundred years since 
Europeans became acquainted with 
platinum through Mr. Wood, Assay- 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


151 


master of Jamaica. The sandy beds 
of the rivers which have their rise in 
that portion of the Andes which sep¬ 
arates the Atlantic (near the Carribean 
Sea) from the Pacific Ocean, yield gold, 
silver and platinum, and many other 
metals. 

Near Carthagena, a city of South 
America, in the republic of New 
Granada, is a famous mine called Santa 
Fe. From this place most of the plat¬ 
inum of commerce is procured, but it 
is also found in the Brazils, Mexico, 
St. Domingo, and the eastern declivity 
of the Ural mountains in Russia. It 
is also found in Borneo, and will prob¬ 
ably be discovered in Australia, if 
proper search be made for it. By some 
extraordinary process, the laboratorian 
chemists can liquify this metal ; but it 
cannot be melted by the strongest 
blast-furnace, nor by any of the 
appliances in ordinary use by metal¬ 
workers ; hence it is said to be infusi¬ 
ble ; and did it not possess that 
property called welding, that is of 
uniting or adhering together when 
squeezed or hammered at a white heat, 
it would be almost useless. As, how¬ 
ever, it can be welded, various useful 
vessels are made of it; and thus we 
find that it has qualities peculiar to 
itself. 

No single acid will dissolve it; and 
hence its very refractory nature render 
it invaluable to philosophers. In a 
platinum crucible they can submit 
other substances to experiments either 
with fire or chemicals without any 
fear of modification from the contain¬ 
ing vessel. 

Magic, according to the lexicog¬ 
raphers, is “the secret workings of 
natural powers.” Such being the case, 
platinum is truly magical, for it pos¬ 
sesses a property or power, the secret 
of which we are unable at present to 


define, which singular quality has been 
brought into practical use by the man¬ 
ufacturing perfumers. At several of 
the perfumery factors’ warehouses 
may be seen what they call the “ Phil¬ 
osophical Incense Lamp,” which is a 
marvelous realization of “ Aladdin’s 
Wonderful Lamp,” so graphically de¬ 
scribed in the Arabian Nights’ Enter¬ 
tainment. This lamp once ignited will 
never go out unless purposely extin¬ 
guished, provided of course that there 
be material to consume. This prop¬ 
erty is due to a little platinum ball 
placed in the wick, which once being 
made red-hot with the flame will remain 
incandescent to the end of time. It is 
this property which is a still unex¬ 
plained secret of nature. The incense 
lamps are trimmed with sweet-smelling 
spirit, and the red-hot platinum causes 
this to evaporate, thus perpetually 
flinging fragrance around. Some few 
years ago platinum was used in Russia 
as money, and stamped as coin of the , 
realm. WJiy it was abandoned we are 
unable to learn. Should there be any 
future scarcity of gold or silver, it is 
probable that platinum will again be 
used as a medium of exchange. If 
a stream of water, passing steadily 
through a pipe of a certain size, were 
suddenly caused to flow through an¬ 
other pipe joined to it of half the size, 
nothing more would be noticed than 
that the water in the smaller pipe 
would flow with increased velocity; 
but if a current of electricity, while 
passing along a copper wire, be made 
to pass over a smaller one, or link of 
platinum wire, then a marvelous effect 
takes place; the platinum becomes 
red-hot! 

In this way — for igniting gunpow¬ 
der at a distance, and blasting rocks — 
engineers find platinum of the great¬ 
est service. 





152 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ABOUT CANES. 


Since 1851, commerce in ordinary 
walking sticks has been quadrupled. 
In Hamburg, Beilin and Vienna — the 
present central depots for export — 
the manufacture employs many thous¬ 
ands of work people. Its control is 
in the hands of Jews. A writer in 
Harper’s Magazine says that the 
Meyers, members of one family of Ger¬ 
man Hebrews, are at its head in 
Austria and Germany proper, and by 
management peculiar to their race 
have absorbed all competition. First 
gaining ascendancy at home by the 
style and cheapness of their wares, 
they next assailed foreign markets. 
In Bombay they undersold the Chinese 
dealers. Scattering thin, light bamboo 
rods along the overland route to ( India, 
the native productions in Egypt and 
Arabia gave place to the more con¬ 
venient Vienese manufacture. The 
French occupation of Algiers intro¬ 
duced their graceful walking sticks 
to the Moorish gentry of Northern 
Africa. Paris began to adopt them. 
Madrid, Naples, and even London, fol¬ 
lowed. They drove the English canes 
out of the Brazils; and on the Western 
coast of South America, where Bel¬ 
gian manufactures had enjoj^ed imme¬ 
morial monopoly, they found a demand 
which it taxed all their resources to 
supply. Curiously enough, California, 
in the use of the Vienese walking cane, 
preceded the Eastern States. Mine 
explorers and gold diggers of the 
Sierra Nevada country gave ton to 
fashion in New York and Chicago. 
The importation of the Meyers cane at 
the present time into the United States 
has swallowed up, like Aaron’s serpent, 
all others. They are found everywhere. 
No Jew clothes man fails to keep 
them among his stock of goods. Light 


French ratans, heavy English crab 
sticks, the curiously carved Brussels 
thorns, and even the choice Alcasian 
orange sticks, have disappeared. The 
Jew specialty always succeeds, and the 
walking stick, manufactured now for 
thirty years by the Meyers, million¬ 
aires, furnishes no exception. 

In the present manufacture of canes 
great quantities and varieties of mate¬ 
rials are consumed. There is scarcely 
grass or shrub, reed or tree, that has 
not been emplo}^ed at one time or 
another. The black thorn and crab, 
cherry tree and furzebush, sapling oak 
and Spanish reed (Arundo donax) are 
the favorites. Then come supple-jacks 
and pimentoes from the West Indies, 
ratans and palms from Java, white and 
black bamboos from Singapore, and 
stems of the bambusa — the gigantic 
grass of the tropics — from Borneo. 
All these must be cut at certain sea¬ 
sons, freed from various appendages, 
searched to discover defects, assorted 
into sizes, and thoroughly rid of moist¬ 
ure. A year’s seasoning is required 
for some woods, two for others. Then 
comes the curious process of manu¬ 
facture. Twenty different handlings 
hardly finish the cheapest cane. The 
bark is to be removed after boiling the 
stick in water, or to be polished after 
roasting it in ashes ; excrescences are 
to be manipulated into points of 
beauty; handles straightened and 
shanks shaped; forms twisted and 
heads rasped ; tops carved or mounted, 
surfaces charred and scraped, shanks 
smoothed or varnished, and bottoms 
shaped and ferruled. Woods, too, have 
to be studied, lest chemical applica¬ 
tions that beautify one might ruin 
another kind. Some are improved 
under subjection to intense heat, others 
destroyed. Malacca canes have fre¬ 
quently to be colored in parts so that 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


153 


stained and natural surfaces are not 
distinguishable; heads and hoofs for 
handles are baked to retain their forms ; 
tortoise shell raspings are conglom¬ 
erated by pressure into ornamental 
shapes, and lithographic transfers, done 
by hand, are extensively used upon 
walking sticks for the Parisian market. 


LISLE THREAD. 

Lisle thread proper is prepared from 
pure cotton —the finest staple that can 
be had, the best quality of Sea Island 
being generally used. The peculiarity 
of this thread is its hard finish and the 
peculiar twist or manipulations which 
it undergoes before being ready for 
use. Each thread or strand passes 
through a flame, which divests it of 
all attaching fiber. This thread is also 
more elastic than the finest linen 
thread and breaks less. It derives its 
name from Lisle a town in France, where 
it was firstmanufactured toany extent, 
and, like many of the industrial arts, was 
originally brought from the East. It is 
now not only extensively produced in 
France, Belgium, and in other portions 
of Continental Europe, but in Great 
Britain as well, and is sometimes known 
as u Scotch Thread.” 


HORSE SHOES. 

History does not reach back to a 
period when the horse was not a com¬ 
panion and servant to mankind ; and 
in the earliest periods of which we 
have any reliable record, the ingenuity 
of men was taxed to invent trappings 
for the decoration, and armor for the 
protection of this noble animal, whose 
services in war are no less conspicuous 
than his patient labor in peaceful avo¬ 
cations is indispensable alike to civil¬ 
ized and barbarous races. 


Precisely when the foot of the 
horse began to be protected by some 
form of shoe is unknown, but the 
necessity for it must have arisen with 
artificial roads, or when it was found 
necessary to employ the animal in 
traversing rocky wastes. 

The anatomy of the horse indicates 
that his natural haunts are broad and 
grassy plains, where his fleet foot may 
spurn the yielding turf without injury 
and where an ample supply of his 
favorite forage may be found. 

In this state he may now be found 
on the extensive table-lands of Texas, 
and the pampas of Mexico, where his 
feet need not the assistance of veteri¬ 
nary art. 

The Greeks and Egyptians practiced 
horse-shoeing in a manner which, so 
far as can be ascertained, consisted of 
applying a kind of sock or sandal, 
fastened about the leg with straps, and 
shod with iron or other metal, for 
strength and extra wear. These were 
probably not generally employed, but 
were used only in cases of disease or 
injury. It is highly probable that the 
primitive horseshoes were made of 
raw hide, stitched -or laced upon the 
foot. 

The ancient Britons do not seem to 
have known the art of horse-shoeing. 
The first indications of this practic, so 
far as archaeologists have been able to 
discover in England, belong to what 
is known as the Romano-British pe¬ 
riod. There is, therefore, little doubt 
that horse-shoes were introduced into 
England by the Romans. 

Specimens of these horse-shoes, more 
or less preserved, have been unearthed 
in various localities. They appear to 
have been without toe-calks, but have 
heel-calks like our modern horse-shoes. 
They have mostly three nail holes in 
each branch of the shoe, and instead 







154 


T1IE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


of a groove in each branch, like the 
shoes of the present day, have large 
oval depressions for the heads of the 
nails. These depressions were evi¬ 
dently stamped in while the iron was 
hot, which operation spread the metal 
so as to form three distinct scallops on 
each side of the shoe. 

The Anglo-Saxon horse-shoe was, 
in its earliest forms, a cumbrous and 
ill-shaped affair, not comparable in 
regularity ot form to the Roman shoe ; 
but its outer edge is not scalloped like 
the Roman shoe. 

The art of horse-shoeing was con¬ 
sidered of the first importance by the 
Normans, and those who excelled were 
employed in the royal establishment, 
and endowed with landed estates and 
titles of honor. 

The efficiency of the horse in battle 
and his usefulness in times of peace, 
depending as they do in so great a 
measure upon his being properly shod, 
justify the importance attached to this 
art in mediaeval as well as modern 
times. The saying of u Poor Richard, 11 
u For want of a nail the shoe was lost; 
for want of a shoe the horse was lost; 
for want of a horse the rider was 
lost; 11 has been verified in many a 
retreat, and many a traveler has been 
exposed to imminent peril by the loss 
of a shoe from the foot of his horse. 

That interest in the further improve¬ 
ment of the horse-shoe is not yet 
extinct is proved by the fact that we 
have illustrated and described within 
the past year or two several improve¬ 
ments of this kind, and a glance 
through the records of the Patent 
Office will show that nearly every year 
brings forth something of this sort. 
It is within the last quarter of a cen¬ 
tury that the extensive manufacture of 
horseshoes by machinery has been 
originated and developed, and the ar¬ 


ticle has been much cheapened thereby. 
Thus this ancient device has probably 
not yet reached a point beyond the 
scope of inventive genius and skill, 
and the time may come when the 
manufacture of malleable cast iron 
may be so perfected as to enable them 
to be cast at much less than their 
present cost, and of as good quality as 
those now made of wrought iron by 
machinery. 


NEEDLES. 

In 1370, needles were manufactured 
at Nuremburg. 

There seems to be some doubt about 
the date of the introduction of the 
needle into England. Stow says that 
needles were not sold in Cheapside till 
the reign of Queen Mary, and that 
they were then made by a Spanish 
negro, who refused to disclose the 
secret of his art. Another authority 
says that they were first made in 
England by a native of India in 1545, 
but the art was lost at his death. The 
Encyclopedie des Gens du Monde says 
that the first metallic needle factory in 
England was established in 1543. We 
may, however, be quite sure that the 
needle in its present form had been 
introduced into England prior to 1553, 
for we hear of its use by the Lady 
Elizabeth at Woodstock in that year, 
and the result of her labors, the em¬ 
broidered back of a book, is at present 
in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. 

Whether or not the art of manu¬ 
facturing needles was really lost at the 
death of the “ native of India,” it 
seems to be quite clear at all events,, 
that no extensive centre of manufact¬ 
ure had been established till 1650. In 
that year, Mr. Damar, an ancestor of 
the Milton family, settled at Long 
Crendon, in Buckinghamshire, Chris- 






155 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


toplier Greening and his three chil¬ 
dren. This little family, doubtless 

1/ 7 

assisted by the benevolence of their 
patron, set up a small needle factory, 
which, if it do not exist at the present 
day, certainly was carried on until 
very recently. At present Worcester¬ 
shire is the chief seat of the needle 
manufacture, but even in this case it 
is not at all clear when Redditch be¬ 
came the centre of the trade. There 
are slight indications, it is said, of 
Redditch needle-making for a period 
of nearly two centuries, but beyond 
that all is blank. There are no partic¬ 
ular advantages offered by the situation 
other than that common to many 
spots, of being near to the seat of the 
English iron trade. 

Respecting the changes which have 
occurred in needle manufacture, it may 
be interesting to mention the apparatus 
designed with the view of obviating 
the inconvenience caused by the dust 
generated in the grinding process. It 
is notorious that this fine mixture of 
metal and sandy particles is productive 
of serious consequences to the health 
of the work people, and as far back as 
the year 1811, the English Society of 
Arts bestirred itself to find a pre¬ 
ventive. 

In the same year the silver medal 
of the society was voted to Mr. Thomas 
Wood, of Great Barkhampstead, for 
his improved grindstone for pointing 
needles. It was nothing more than an 
ordinary grindstone provided with a 
hood or case in which was a pane of 
glass to enable the operator to watch 
his work. The current of air formed 
by the motion of the stone was con¬ 
fined within the case, and carried with 
it the fine particles, which it deposited 
on the lower part of the inside of a 
wet cloth which formed the connection 
between the sides of the case. 


WHERE THE APOSTLES REST. 


Catholic authorities state that the 
remains of the apostles of Christ are 
now in the following places: Seven 
are in Rome — namely, Peter, Philip, 
James the Lesser, Jude, Bartholomew, 
Matthias and Simon. Three are in the 
kingdom at Naples, Matthew at Salerno, 
Andrew at Amalfi, and Thomas at 
Ortano. One in Spain, James the 
Greater, whose remains are at St. Jago 
de Compostella. Of the body of St. 
John, the evangelist, the remaining 
one of the twelve, there is no knowl¬ 
edge. The evangelists, Mark and Luke 
are also in Italy —the former at Ven¬ 
ice and the latter at Padua. St. Paul’s 
remains are also believed to be in Italy. 
Peter’s are, of course, in the church at 
Rome, which is called after him, as 
are also those of Simon and Jude. 
Those of James the Lesser and of 
Philip are in the Church of the Holy 
Apostles; Bartholomew’s in the church 
on the island in the Tiber, called after 
him; Matthias’s are in Santa Maria 
Maggiore, under the great altar of the 
renowned Basilica. 


HISTORY OF PINS. 

Pins formed of wire seem to have 
been unknown in England till about 
the middle of the 15th century, before 
which time they were larger than the 
present pin, and were made of box¬ 
wood, bone, ivory, and some few of 
silver. Metal pins had, however, long 
been matters of history. In the Egypt¬ 
ian tombs they are frequently found, 
and are much more elaborate and costlv 
than those produced to suit modem 
requirements. They vary in length 
up to 7 or 8 inches, and are furnished 









156 


TIIE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


sometimes with large gold heads, and 
sometimes with a band of gold around 
the upper end, those of the latter kind 
having probably been used for securing 
the hair. The ancient Mexicans were 
familiar with their use, but they also 
found a convenient substitute in the 
thorns of the agave. About the mid¬ 
dle of the 15th century metal pins 
were in use to a small extent in this 
country, and we hear of Catherine 
Howard importing them from France 
somewhere about the year 1540. The 
importation of pins really dates much 
further back, for in 1483 it was made 
the subject of a prohibitory statute. 
In 1543. another act, passed in the 
reign of Henry VIII., provided “ that 
no person should put to sale any pinnes 
but only such as shall be double 
headed, and have the heads soldered 
fast to the shank of the pinnes, well 
smoothed, the shank well shapen, the 
points well and round, filed, cauted 
and sharpened.” 

Within three years from this date, 
the manufacture was so much im¬ 
proved that the enactment became of 
little value. It is very probable that 
the imported pins were the cause of 
this manifestation of government in¬ 
terference. The best pins were made 
of brass, but in France it had become 
very general to manufacture pins from 
iron wire, which, being blanched like 
the others, passed for brass. The pins 
so made were very defective, and in a 
little time their use was confined to 
the continent. The French especially 
could with difficulty be prevailed upon 
to discard them, and even as late as 
1695 it is recorded that the seizure of 
some millions of the faulty pins by 
order of the lieutenant of police was 
confirmed by the parliament, and the 
whole quantity was ordered to be 
burnt by the common executioner. 


The manufacture of pins was started 
in Gloucestershire, England, by John 
Tilsby, in 1626, and the business soon 
proved so prosperous that it gave 
employment to 1,500 persons. Ten 
years later it was established in Lon- 
don. About the middle of the last 
century, wire-drawing and pin-making 
were commenced in Birmingham by 
the Rylands family, who carried on 
most successfully this branch of in¬ 
dustry. So much of the business as 
related to pins was transferred about 
1785 by Mr. Samuel R}Jands to his 
nephew, Mr. Thomas Phipson, and this 
manufacture has since been continued 
by the present firm of Thomas Phip¬ 
son and Son. 

The trade gradually improved, but 
without any remarkable impetus, until 
1824, when Mr. Lemuel W. Wright, s 
native of Massachusetts, patented in 
Great Britian an important machine 
of his own invention, which is often 
believed to have been the first ever 
contrived for making solid headed pins. 
Mr. Wright introduced his machine to 
the public in London, where it was 
worked at a factory in Lambeth. The 
enterprise was not successful, and the 
company failed before the new pins 
could be brought into the market. 
The machinery was then transferred 
to Stroud, in Gloucestershire, the coun¬ 
ty where the trade had been originally 
introduced two centuries before, and 
here the manufacture was conducted 
by Messrs. D. F. Taylor & Co. 

The first solid headed pins were sold 
by this firm, in London, somewhere 
about the year 1833. 


A. T. Stewart testified under oath 
that he had never seen laces worth 
more than $250 per yard, and that the 
modern article is more valuable than 
the ancient. 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


157 


CLOCKS. 

Clocks may be considered a modern 
invention. Even within a few years 
great improvements have been made 
in their manufacture by which they 
may be ranked among the commonest 
articles of household convenience be¬ 
cause of their cheapness, while at the 
same time their value as accurate time¬ 
pieces is not impaired. This result is 
due to the employment of machinery 
instead of hand labor in their con¬ 
struction, by which rapidity, exactness, 
and the reduplication of parts is se¬ 
cured. 

The first time-measurers of which 
we have any historical knowledge were 
sun-dials, similar probably to those 
now used merely as curiosities. But 
before that period, time was undoubt¬ 
edly measured by the observation of 
natural objects, particularly the rela¬ 
tive length of shadows cast by fixed 
objects. In the book of Job, one of 
the oldest of preserved writings, he 
refers to this mode of measuring time 
when he says, chap, vii, 2-4 : — 

As a servant earnestly desireth the 
shadow and as a hireling looketh for 
the reward of his work, so am I made 
to possess months of vanity and weari¬ 
some nights are appointed to me. 
When I lie down I say, When shall I 
arise and the night be gone. And I 
am full of tossings to and fro unto the 
dawning of the day. 

This custom has obtained even to our 
own days. Many now living remember 
how, in the country, where no more 
reliable means were at hand, the din¬ 
ner hour and time for ceasing labor on 
the farm were determined by the 
length of shadows cast by familiar 
objects. The sun-dial, however, in 
some shape, has been used for many 
centuries. We remember when in the 
school room we watched lines on the 
window sill, scratched with a pocket 


knife, to cheer the tedium of the u hope 
deferred ” by anticipating the welcome 
hour of dismissal, or the time of recess. 

An improvement on the sun-dial 
was the clepsydra, a vessel containing 
water which found its way, drop by 
drop, through a minute aperture. 
These water clocks appear to have 
been a very early invention. They 
were used by the Chaldeans, and intro¬ 
duced into Europe by the Romans. 
The hour-glass was a great improve¬ 
ment and was used within the memory 
of persons now living, as measurers 
of time, especially in the school room, 
and these cannot forget the couplet in 
the “New England Primer” — 

“As runs tlie Glass, 

Our life cloth pass.” 

Sand glasses registering three or 
four minutes are now used as attach¬ 
ments to egg-boilers, and also at sea 
for some nautical calculations. 

We have no certain data for fixing 
the invention of clocks which were in 
any degree similar to those now used. 
Indeed, the only characteristics of 
these early time-measurers which they 
have in common with ours, is that 
they had wheels, one or more pointers, 
or a bell, and were moved by weights. 
Such or a similar machine is spoken of 
as being sent to Frederic II. by the 
Sultan of Egypt. Calmet in speaking 
of the customs of the Cisterian monks 
in 1120, alludes to the striking of the 
clock to awaken them to attend to 
their devotions. Dante, who died in 
1321, speaks of the striking of a clock. 
About 1364, Henri de Wyck, a German 
mechanician, erected a clock in the 
palace of Charles Y. of France. Most 
of the historical evidence which is 
reliable seems to point to this period 
as the first introduction of clocks, and 
to the fact that the Germans were the 
most successful clock makers. 








158 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


The discovery of the isochronism of 
the pendulum by Gallileo and its appli¬ 
cation to the regulation of clock work 
by his son Yincenti, appears to have 
been the starting point from which the 
art of horology has reached its present 
state of perfection. Christian Huy¬ 
gens, however, seems to deserve credit 
for constructing pendulum clocks, 
which were really valuable and reliable, 
although Richard Harris, of London, 
claims to have antedated the improve¬ 
ments of Huygens by sixteen years, 
he having used the pendulum success¬ 
fully in 1641, while Huygens claims 
are dated 1657. 

To come nearer to our own times, 
who has not seen the Dutch clocks 
generally brought to this country by 
English and German emigrants P They 
had no cases, only a dial, behind which 
were the works, the whole being sus¬ 
pended from a nail on the wall near 
the ceiling. The weights hung by 
strings, and could descend to the floor, 
while the clock was wound up by pull¬ 
ing a cord. Still later we have the 
long-cased clock, so beautifully charac¬ 
terized by Longfellow in his poem, 
“ The Old Clock on the Stairs.” 

Somewhat back from the village street 
Stands the old-fashioned country seat ; 
Across its antique portico 
Tall poplar trees their shadows throw, 
While from its station in the hall 
The ancient timepiece says to all : 

Forever — Never — 

Never — Forever. 

Halfway up the stairs it stands, 

And points and beckons with its hands 
From its case of massive oak, 

Like a monk, who, under his cloak, 

Crosses himself, and sighs, alas! 

With sorrowful voice to all who pass,— 
Forever — Never — 

Never — Forever. 

These old clocks had pendulums 
beating whole seconds and running 


eight days, both of which were pro¬ 
vided for by the length of the case, 
which extended from the floor to the 
ceiling, at least in low ceiled houses, 
being six or seven feet high. The 
story of the suitor who hid in the 
clock case from the prying investi¬ 
gation of the irate father is familiar 
to all. Many of these old-fashioned 
clocks showed, in a semi-circle above 
the face, the changes of the moon, 
and all were ornamented with quaint 
pictures on glass. To many of our 
readers this brief reference to the old- 
fashioned clock will bring a recollection 
of pleasant seasons and scenes not to 
be again enjoyed or viewed. 


WATER-CLOCKS. 

Bowls were used to measure time, 
from which water, drop by drop, was 
discharged through a small aperture. 
Such bowls were called water-clocks 
{clepsydrae). It was then observed 
how much water from such a bowl or 
cask, from sunrise till the shortest 
shadow, trickled down into another 
bowl beneath ; and this time being the 
half of the solar day, was divided into 
six hours. Consequently they took a 
sixth of the water which had trickled 
down, poured it into the upper bowl, 
and, this discharged, one hour had 
expired. But afterward a more conve¬ 
nient arrangement was made. They 
observed how high the water at each 
hour rose in the lower bowl, marked 
these points and counted them, thus 
finding out how many hours there 
were till sunrise. With the Chinese, 
water-clocks, or clepsydras, are very 
old. They used a round vessel, filled 
with water, with a little hole in the 
bottom, which was placed upon an¬ 
other vessel. When the water in the 
upper vessel pressed down into the 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


159 


lower vessel, it subsided by degrees, 
announcing thereby the parts of time 
elapsed. 

The Babylonians are said to have 
used such instruments ; from them the 
Greeks of Asia Minor got them, at the 
time of King Cirus, about the year 
550 before Christ. But the Romans 
did not get the first water clock before 
the year 160 before Christ. But 
though the hours of the clepsydra did 
not vary in length, they still counted 
them from the morning. When the 
clock with us strikes seven, the 
ancients counted one; when the 
clock with us strikes twelve, the 
ancients counted six, and so forth. 
This method of counting the hours 
was, according to the New Testament, 
also customary in Palestine at the time 
of Christ. The water clocks had that 
advantage, that they could be used in 
the night; and the Romans used them 
to divide their night-watches, which 
were relieved four times, both Summer 
and Winter. Conformably to these 
four night watches, time was counted, 
not only in Rome, but wherever 
Roman garrisons were stationed ; con¬ 
sequently, also in Palestine, after she 
had become a Roman province. The 
first night watch was called vespera, 
(evening,) from sunset to 9 o’clock; 
the second, media nox, (midnight,) 
from 9 to 2 o’clock; the third, galli- 
cinium , (cock-crowing,) from 2 to 3 
o’clock ; and the fourth, mane (morn¬ 
ing,) from 3 o’clock to day break. 


ORIGIN OF THE CONNECTICUT CLOCK 
BUSINESS. 

Bishop, in his “History of American 
Manufactures,” says that the wooden 
clock manufacture was commenced in 
Waterbury, Conn., by James Harrison, 
in 1790, on whose books the first is 


charged January 1, 1791, at £3 12s 8d. 
In East Windsor the brass clock man¬ 
ufacture was carried on by Daniel 
Burnap. Specimens which are still 
preserved are said to be nowise inferior 
in workmanship to the best English 
clocks of that or any later period. 
Clocks were also made in East Hart¬ 
ford by a Mr. Cheeny. In 1793, Eli 
Terry who had been instructed in the 
business as practiced by him and 
Cheeny, removed from East Windsor, 
where he had carried on clock-making, 
to Plymouth, in Litchfield County. 
His subsequent enterprise and improve¬ 
ments in the art in that place entitle 
him to be considered the parent of 
the manufacture in Connecticut. At 
that time, Thomas Barnes, of Litch¬ 
field, and Gideon Roberts, of Bristol, 
were also known as clock-makers. The 
kinds of clocks made by these were 
brass and wooden clocks, with long 
pendulums, and their price was, for a 
wooden clock and case, from $18 to 
$48, the higher priced ones having a 
brass dial and dial for seconds, and the 
moon’s age, and a more costly case. 
Brass clocks with a case, cost from $38 
to $60. So limited was the sale at 
those prices, that three or four hundred 
constituted a stock in trade, and they 
were carried out for sale by the makei 
on horseback, the case being procured 
by the purchaser at from $5 to $30, 
according to his taste. 

Terry made both kinds, using a hand 
engine for cutting the teeth of the 
wheels and pinions, and a foot lathe 
for the turned work. In November, 
1797, he patented an improvement in 
clocks, watches and time pieces, cover¬ 
ing a new construction of an equation 
clock, showing the difference between 
apparent and mean time. In 1802, in 
which year Willard, of Boston, took 
a patent for his time pieces, Terry 







160 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


began the business on a larger scale, 
b}^ water power, and, five or six years 
after, his success in making them by 
the thousand, which had been ridiculed 
as chimerical, enabled him greatly to 
extend the manufacture, which others 
now commenced on the wholesale sys¬ 
tem. 

In 1814, he introduced a new era in 
the business, by commencing on the 
Naugatuck river the manufacture of 
the shelf or mantel clock, which he pat¬ 
ented in 1816. The cheapness of these 
created a wide demand. Several im¬ 
provements made by him in the 
mechanism, and the later progress in 
machinery generally, have increased 
the annual production in that State 
to hundreds of thousands, and given to 
every household a clock, equal to the 
old ones, at a cost of $2 and upward. 
His descendants have been engaged in 
the business to the present time, and 
his pupil, Chauncey Jerome, since 
1821. 

Apart from the importance of horo- 
logical machines in every department 
of life, and especially in relation to 
science and business, there are few of 
the mechanic arts which have fur¬ 
nished more numerous and striking 
examples of great and useful inven¬ 
tions among its members than the 
clock and watch making business. 
Many, both in Europe and America, 
have first exercised in this way their 
ingenuity, which has afterward con¬ 
duced to discoveries of universal util¬ 
ity. Rittenhouse, Fitch, (also a native 
of Connecticut), Whittemore, who, 
before any of the above, also con¬ 
structed without a model, an efficient 
wooden clock, Dr. Franklin, and others, 
might be named. Clock-makers are 
said to have been the first who em¬ 
ployed special machines for their man¬ 
ufactures. the wheel*cutting engine 


having been invented by Dr. Hooke 
about 1655, and the screw-cutting 
lathe by Hindley, a clock-maker of 
York, England, in 1741. The fusee 
engine and slide rest, the value of 
which are known to all mechanicians 
who use metal, are of a later introduc¬ 
tion, although the latter, in an imper¬ 
fect form, was used at Rome in 1648, 
and attained its present form in 1772. 

The Assembly of Connecticut, in 
October, 1783, awarded a patent for 
fourteen years to Benjamin Hanks, of 
Litchfield, for a self-winding clock. It 
was to wind itself by the help of the 
air, and to keep more regular time than 
other machines. The principle was 
made use of in New York and else¬ 
where. 


REN LAFAYETTE’S WATCH. 

It is doubtless within the recollec¬ 
tion of many in this city that in the 
year 1824, General Lafayette made a 
tour of this country, attended by such 
an ovation as offered, perhaps, the 
grandest spectacle of a nation’s tribute 
to a hero the world has ever. seen. 
During his tour, while on a visit to 
some town in the State of Tennessee, 
the General was mysteriously robbed of 
his watch, a valued souvenir, which 
had been presented to him (in 1781) 
by General George Washington, to 
commemorate at once the affectionate 
relations which had long existed be¬ 
tween them, and his gallant services 
at the siege of Yorktown, the crown¬ 
ing event in the struggle for Ameri¬ 
can independence. Directly upon the 
robbery becoming known, most stren¬ 
uous efforts were made for its recovery, 
but, despite the fact that the Governor 
of Tennessee offered a reward of one 
thousand dollars for its return, not the 
slightest trace of it was thereafter 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


101 


obtained, and General Latayette was 
eventually compelled to return to 
France, resigned to the thought that 
the precious gift of his dear friend was 
lost to him forever. 

The years passed on, and with their 
lapse men’s recollection of the circum¬ 
stances faded away. Lafayette died in 
1834, and for a space of forty-eight 
years the stolen watch bore an un¬ 
known history. At the end of that 
time, but a few days ago, a gentleman 
residing in this city, while visiting 
Louisville, attended an auction sale at 
a junk shop, where, strange to relate, 
he found among the articles offered, a 
watch, which, upon examination, he 
discovered to be the long-lost watch 
of Lafayette. 

Suffice it to say that he eagerly pur¬ 
chased it, and as quickly formed the 
resolution to transmit it to the family 
of General Lafayette, now residing in 
Paris; pending which transmission, 
however, the gentleman has brought 
it to his home, and has consented to 
its exhibition for a few days at E. A. 
Tyler’s jewelry store, on Canal street. 

The watch is open-faced, of gold, 
with a double case, and may be re¬ 
marked as of a peculiar appearance, 
being of only ordinary size, but nearly 
as thick as it is wide. The outer case 
bears upon its entire surface carved 
figures, in has relief, representing the 
picture of Mars offering a crown to 
the goddess of Peace, who is sur¬ 
rounded by her emblems, while over all 
appear the stern implements of war, 
hung high out of reach. On the inner 
case appears the yet clearly legible 
inscription : 

G. WASHINGTON 

TO 

GILBERT MARQUIS de LaFAYETTE, 
Lord Cornwallis’s Capitulation, 

YORKTOWN, 

Decb’r 17, 1781. 


On the covering of the works is 
seen the maker’s name — E. Halifax, 
London, 1759 .—New Orleans News. 

The United States Government has 
since purchased this watch, and pre¬ 
sented it to the only living lineal 
descendant of Lafayette. The pre¬ 
sentation was made in Paris by the 
American Minister, Mr. Washburne. 


THE WATCH. 

“Watch'’ is from a Saxon word 
signifying “ to wake.” At first the 
watch was as large as a saucer; it had 
weights, and was called “the pocket 
clock.' 1 The earliest known use of the 
modern name occurs in a record of 
1542, which mentions that Edward VI. 
had “ onne larum or watch of iron, 
the case being likewise of iron-gilt, 
with two plumettes of lead.” The 
first great improvement, the substitu¬ 
tion of the spring for weights, was 
made about 1550. The earliest springs 
were not coiled, but only straight 
pieces of steel. Early watches had 
only one hand, and required winding 
twice a day. The dials were of silver 
or brass ; the cases had no crystals, 
but opened at back and front, and were 
four or five inches in diameter. A 
plain watch cost the equivalent of 
$1,500 in our currency, and after one 
was ordered it took a year to make it. 

There is a watch in a Swiss museum 
only three-sixteenths of an inch in 
diameter, inserted in the top of a 
pencil-case. Its little dial indicates 
not only hours, minutes, and seconds, 
but also days of the month. It is a 
relic of the old times, when watches 
were inserted in saddles, snuff boxes, 
shirt studs, breast-pins, bracelets and 
finger rings. Many were fantastic — 
oval, octangular, cruciform, or in the 
shape of pears, melons, tulips, or coffins. 






162 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


WHO MADE THE FIRST WATCH. 


Watches were made at Nuremburg, 
Bavaria, in the beginning of the 16th 
century by Peter Hele. The first 
record of watch-making is found in 
the works of Johannes Coccianes, who, 
in 1511, wrote the following: “ Inge¬ 
nious things are just now being 
invented; for Peter Hele, as yet but a 
young man, hath made works which 
even the most learned mathematicians 
admire ; for he fabricates small horolo¬ 
gies of iron filled with many wheels, 
which whithersoever they are turned, 
and without any weights, both show 
and strike forty hours, whether they 
be carried in the bosom or the pocket. ,, 
It took a year to make one, and a plain 
one would cost about $1,500. 


ABOUT CORAL. 


The Greeks named coral the “ daugh¬ 
ter of the seaand Theophrastus 
reckons it among the precious stones. 
Pliny tells us that coral was no less 
esteemed in India than were pearls in 
Rome, “it being the prevailing taste 
in each nation respectively that con¬ 
stitutes the value of things,” he 
observes. “ Solimus informs us,” so 
he continues, “ that Zoroaster attrib¬ 
uted certain mysterious properties to 
coral; hence it is that they equally 
value it as an ornament and as an 
object of devotion.” 

In Persia, China and Japan, coral 
was prized almost as much as gold. 
The Gauls in ancient times were accus¬ 
tomed to ornament their armor with 
this lovely product of the Gallic and 
Italian seas; but finding the value of 
it as an article of exportation, it soon 
became comparatively rare in the coun¬ 
tries where it at first abounded. 

Pliny describes coral as a marine 


plant, bearing crimson berries; nor 
can we wonder that he should have 
been led into this mistake when we 
find the error repeated almost down to 
our own times. In Johnson’s Diction¬ 
ary is the following definition : “ Coral, 
a plant of great hardness and stony 
nature while growing in the water as 
it is after long exposure to the air.” 

Coming down to the mediaeval age, 
the first mention we have of coral is 
in the inventory of Alianore de 
Bohun, where a paternoster of coral 
with gilded gaudier, and three branches 
of coral, are among the list of valua¬ 
bles. Quite as many superstitious 
beliefs were then attached to this sup¬ 
posed submarine plant as in a more 
remote period. Reginald Doot, in his 
Discoveries of Witchcraft, tells us 
that “the coral preserveth such as 
wear it from fascination or bewitching, 
and in this respect they are hanged 
about children’s necks.” Plat, in his 
Jewel House of Nature, repeats the 
same story, adding that it preserves 
from the falling sickness. “It hath 
also some special sympathy with 
nature,” he continues, “for the best 
coral being worn about the neck will 
turn pale and wan if the party that 
wears it be sick, and comes to its 
former color again as they recover 
health.” 

In 1670, Tournefort described coral 
as a plant; and Reaumur declared it 
as his opinion, but slightly differing 
from other naturalists, that it was a 
stony product of marine plants. The 
Count di Marsigli went a step further, 
and not only asserted the vegetable 
nature of coral, but declared that he 
had seen its flowers ! In his work La 
Physique de la Mer , he gives a repre¬ 
sentation of these sea blossoms, thus 
setting the question at rest forever, as 
it is supposed. Others, however, were 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


1G3 


not quite so well satisfied; and in 
1723, Jean Andre de Peysonnel, a 
student of medicine and natural his¬ 
tory, was deputed by the French 
Academie des Sciences to make further 
observations in elucidation of this 
interesting subject. He began his ex¬ 
aminations first in the neighborhood 
of Marseilles, and continued them on 
the north coast of Africa. At last, 
after long, exact and delicate observa¬ 
tions, he came to the conclusion that 
the Count di Marsiglrs flowers were 
animals, and demonstrated that the 
coral was no plant, but the product of 
a colony of polypi. Let him describe 
his experiment in his own words : 

“I put the flower of the coral in 
vases full of sea-water, and I saw that 
what had been taken for the flower of 
this pretended plant was, in truth, only 
an insect like a little sea-nettle or 
polype. I had the pleasure of seeing 
move the claws or feet of the creature ; 
and having put the vase full of water 
which contained the coral in a gentle 
heat over the fire, all the small insects 
seem to expand. The polype extended 
his feet, and form what M. di Marsigli 
and I had taken for the petals of a 
flower. The calyx of this pretended 
flower, in short, was the animal which 
advanced and issued out of its shell.” 

But after all Peysnonel’s labors, he 
received neither reward nor thanks for 
his discovery; it was ridiculed by 
Reaumur and Bernard de Jessieu, as 
something quite unworthy of credit. 


THE ANTIQUITY OF INTENTION. 

The most ancient invention is that 
of the needle. Whether the credit of 
this invention is due to Adam and 
Eve, we know not, but we do know 
that the Bible says u they sewed fig- 
leaves together, and made themselves 


aprons.” To sew without a needle 
would be an impossibility, therefore 
they must have invented one ; whether 
from a thorn, shay-stick, or fish-bone 
is also a matter of doubt. How ancient 
then, is the trade of dress-making ; 
and when we look at the fashionably 
dressed woman of to-day, and reflect 
that all her dress, finery, etc., is the 
result of the combined thought, indus¬ 
try and perseverance of dress-makers 
for nearly 6,000 years, is it to be won¬ 
dered that she is “fearfully and won¬ 
derfully made ?” 

To Noah is attributed the invention 
of wine, 2347, B. C. Ale was known 
at least 404, B. C., and beer was men¬ 
tioned 401, B. C. Backgammon, the 
most ancient of our games, was in¬ 
vented by Palamedes of Greece, 1224, 
B. C. Chess is of later date, and orig¬ 
inated 680 years before the Christian 
Era. The first circus was built by 
Tarqin, 605, B. C., and theatrical repre¬ 
sentations took place as long as 562, 
B. C. The first tragedy represented 
was written by Thespis, 556, B. C. So 
it seems that the ancients were not as 
destitute of amusements as one would 
suppose. Is it not possible that the 
philosopher, Socrates, delighted in 
chess ; that Sophocles amused his little 
friends by taking them to see the 
gladiators and the tragedians, and that 
even immortal Homer could play a 
fair game of backgammon P 

As for musical instruments they 
possesed the psaltry, harp, lute, and 
the most ancient instrument, the 
cymbal, which is spoken of as long 
ago as 1580, B. C. The flute was the 
invention of Hyaginus, 1506, B. C.; 
organs were invented by Archimedes, 
220, B. C.; and Nero played upon the 
melodious bagpipe 51, A. D. 

In household furniture, glass was 
used bjr the Egyptians and Greeks, 








1G4 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


1490, B. C.; carpets were in use 800, 
B. C.; clocks which measured time by 
the falling of water were invented 157, 

B. C.; sun-dials,which had been in use 
previous to the invention of water- 
clocks, date from 550, B. C. 

Bricks were made 2247, B. C.; the 
lathe was invented by Tains, 1240, B. 

C. ; the compass was used by the Chi¬ 
nese 1115, B. C.; bellows are the in¬ 
vention of the Anarcharis, 569 years 
B. C. 

But when we think that bread made 
from wheat was known to the Chinese 
3860 years ago, we must confess that 
it is rather stale. We can imagine the 
young “ heathen Chinee” of that date 
crying lustily for bread and honey. 
These Chinese are a wonderful people 
and no mistake, for even as far back 
as 1100, B. C., Mr. Paout-she wrote a 
dictionary containing forty thousand 
characters representing words. 


CAMEOS. 

There is great uncertainty as to the 
origin of the word cameo or camaieu; 
some of the learned tracing it to the 
Arabic camaa, an amulet; others sup¬ 
posing it to be derived from chama, a 
shell used by workers in cameo ; others, 
again, giving it an Italian origin. The 
term, however derived, in modern lan¬ 
guages has always been applied to a 
gem, stone, or shell carved in relief, in 
contradistinction to intaglio or engrav¬ 
ing in cavo; though usually under¬ 
stood to signify a medallion with fig¬ 
ures raised in relief upon a ground of 
a different color. 

Cameos were highly prized by the 
ancients; the glyptographic art being 
brought to the utmost state of perfec¬ 
tion in the palmy days of Greece, at 
the same time with the arts of archi¬ 
tecture and sculpture. The names of 


a few ancient gem-engravers have been 
handed down to us. We hear of Cro- 
nius and Apollondides ; and of Pyrgo- 
teles, who lived in the time of Alex¬ 
ander the Great, and was employed by 
him both as a seal-engraver and worker 
in cameo. There are but few un¬ 
doubted Greek cameos extant; one of 
these — having for its subject. Cupid 
playing on a lyre — is inscribed with 
the name “ Plotarque.” 

Stones such as agate, onyx and 
jasper, used for cameos, are not inde¬ 
structible, like the gems on which 
signets are engraved, but, on the con¬ 
trary, are extremely liable to be split 
or chipped. Work in relief, moreover, 
if buried in the ground with other 
debris , becomes injured and defaced; 
this will account for the small number 
of antique cameos remaining. Of 
shell cameos, there is only one Greek 
specimen existing — the head of a 
nymph found in a vase at Yulci. This 
one specimen is, however, quite suffi¬ 
cient to prove that carving on shells 
was practiced by Greek artists. The 
frailty of the material renders it little 
surprising that no others have been 
discovered. 

Cameo-cutting was an art much 
esteemed in the Augustan age, when 
Greek artists were encouraged to settle 
in Rome in order to supply the de¬ 
mand for these beautiful ornaments. 
Cameos have always been truly objets de 
luxe , and were used among the Romans 
not only to decorate their persons, but 
the service of their table, especially 
those cups called gemmae potariae . 
Many of these beautiful cups are pre¬ 
served in the cabinets of collectors. 
But few Roman artists arrived at so 
great a degree of perfection in carving 
and engraving as the Greeks. They 
were less skillful in design, and were 
for the most part content to copy from 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


165 


intaglii and other sources. The de¬ 
mand for cameos became so great in 
the later days of the Empire that, in 
wealthy houses slaves were regularly 
employed in cutting cameos, just as 
they were in transcribing manuscripts. 
Of course these slaves were not all 
artists, not all even skillful copyists; 
thus the art of cameo-making became 
degraded. 

There are few antique cameos of so 
small a size as to fit rings ; they are 
mostly of bolder workmanship, in order 
to be effective at a distance; though 
Seneca mentions a ring set with the 
head of Tiberius in cameo. The reason 
why these cameo rings are rare is 
obvious; among the ancients, rings 
were little used, except as signets, for 
which engraved gems were, of course, 
only applicable. 

The stones principally used by the 
Greeks and Romans for cameo-cutting 
were the agate, onyx and the Indian 
sardonyx; the latter was the most 
prized on account of the variety of 
tint in its different beds or layers, and 
its beautiful warm transparent cornel¬ 
ian-like ground. In these stones there 
are two or three, or sometimes even 
four layers of various contrasting hues, 
as white on dark red, or white on 
black. In others the upper layer is 
blue or brown, the center one white, 
and the base black or warm brown. 
The real Oriental onyx is now scarce, 
and therefore valuable. A stone the 
size of a silver dollar is worth about 
$150 in gold. 

These precious pebbles were formerly 
found in India plentifully enough in 
the beds of torrents. The Indians 
were in the habit of boring holes 
through them and wearing them as 
necklaces. The Romans purchased 
them in their original round or oval 
shape, and cut them down into flat 


discs, to work upon according to the 
disposition of the strata. The cameo- 
cutters prized those pebbles all the 
more when perforated, as they consid¬ 
ered the hole a warrant for the genu¬ 
ineness of the article. In the Pulski 
collection there is a cameo carved on 
an onyx that has been perforated in 
this manner, and in the hole is still a 
bit of the wire by which the stone 
was originally suspended. 


EARLY MANUFACTURE OF PAPER 
IN AMERICA. 


The manufacture of paper of any 
description was not established in any 
of the colonies until full fifty years 
after the introduction of printing, the 
first paper mill having been erected 
in the vicinity of Philadelphia by one 
William Rittenhousen, a native of 
Germany, about the year 1690. The 
first paper mill in New England was 
established in the town of Milton, 
near Boston, in the year 1730. In 
1732, the following advertisement ap¬ 
peared in the weekly Rehearsal , of 
of Boston: 

“ Richard Fry, Stationer, Bookseller, 
Papermaker and Rag Merchant, from 
the city of London, keeps at Mr. 
Thomas Fleets, printer, at the Heart 
and Crown, in Cornhill, Boston, where 
said Fry is ready to accommodate all 
Gentlemen, Merchants and Tradesmen 
with setts of accompt books after the 
most acute manner for twenty per cent, 
cheaper than they have them from 
London. I return the Public Thanks 
for following the Directions of my 
former Advertisement for gathering 
rags, and hope they will continue the 
like Method, having received upward 
of Seven thousand weight already.” 

The early scarcity of paper in the 
colonies is illustrated by the following 








166 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


curious advertisement, which appeared 
in the Boston Evening Post , in 1748: 

“ Choice Pennsylvania Tobacco is 
to be sold by the publisher of this 
paper at the Heart and Crown, where 
may also be had the Bulls or indulgen¬ 
ces of the present Pope, Urban VIII., 
either by the single Bull, Quire or 
Ream, at a much cheaper rate than 
they can be purchased of the French 
or Spanish priests.” 

The explanation of this was that 
several bales of “indulgences,” printed 
upon very good paper and only on one 
side, had been captured by an English 
cruiser from a Spanish vessel, and be¬ 
ing offered at a very low price, had 
been purchased by the Boston printer, 
who saw an opportunity for profit by 
printing ballads or other matter for his 
customers upon the backs of the pon¬ 
tifical documents in question. It is 
also to be noted that about this time 
Robert Saltonstall was fined five shil¬ 
lings by the General Court of Massa¬ 
chusetts for presenting a petition on a 
small and bad piece of paper. 

In 1768, Colonel Christopher Leffing- 
well erected at Norwich the first paper 
mill in the colony of Connecticut, 
under a promise of a bounty from the 
General Assembly. Two years after 
he was accordingly awarded twopence 
a quire on 4,020 quires of writing- 
paper, and one penny each on 10,600 
quires of printing-paper. Having at¬ 
tained such a degree of success, it is 
recorded that the government patron¬ 
age was soon afterward withdrawn. 

In Pennsylvania, the Dunkers, who 
settled Lancaster county, very early 
gave their attention to the manufact¬ 
ure of paper, and also set up a printing 
press. During the Revolution, and 
just previous to the battle of Brandy¬ 
wine, messages were sent to their mill 
for a supply of paper for cartridges. 


The mill happening to be out of un¬ 
manufactured paper, the fraternity, 
who held their property in common, 
sent back as a substitute to the Conti¬ 
nental army several wagon loads of an 
edition of Fox’s Book of Martyrs , and 
from the paper supplied by the pages 
of this work the cartridges used in the 
battle were in part manufactured. 

About the year 1770, the number of 
paper mills in the provinces of Penn¬ 
sylvania, New Jersey and Delaware was 
reported to be forty, this department 
of manufacturing industry having es¬ 
pecially developed in the vicinity of 
Philadelphia, which, at that time, was 
the centre of literary activity for the 
colonies. It was a business, moreover, 
in which Mr. Franklin was greatly 
interested; and he told De Warville, 
a French traveler who visited America 
in 1788, that he had himself estab¬ 
lished as many as eighteen mills. 

The business of the manufacture of 
“ paper-hangings ” commenced in the 
colonies about the year 1760, and in 
1791, it was one of the branches of • 
domestic industry, according to the 
report of the Secretary of the Treas¬ 
ury, which were well established. 


THE LANGUAGE OF JEWELS. 

From the most remote period of 
history significance has been attached 
to precious stones, they being supposed 
to exert a baneful or blessed influence 
over the wearers. Among other curi¬ 
ous old fancies about them is that 
which connects one with each month 
in the year, and with all who are born 
in that month. Thus, to January 
belong the garnet and the jacinth, 
which preserve the wearer from pesti¬ 
lence and from lightning (rather nec¬ 
essary at this season, in this zone). 
To February belongs the amethyst, 







167 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


signifying temperance. It protects 
the wearer from evil thoughts, and 
cures or prevents inebriety. It makes 
him diligent, and procures him the 
favor of princes. * The stone of March 
is the jasper, which cures hemorrhage 
when worn or applied to a wound. 
Those born in April should wear the 
sapphire, significant of purity. To 
May belongs the agate, which protects 
from poison and appeases pain. If 
single in color it renders the wearer 
invincible. June has the emerald, sig¬ 
nificant of hope ; teaching the knowl¬ 
edge of secrets, bestowing eloquence 
and wealth. It betrays inconstancy 
by crumbling to pieces when it cannot 
avert the evil. Achinet Steiram says 
that u he who dreams of green gems 
will become renowned, and meet with 
truth and fidelity.” The falling of an 
emerald from its setting is an evil omen 
to the wearer. When George III. was 
crowned a large emerald fell from the 
crown. America was lost to Great 
Britain during his reign. 

To July belongs the onyx, which 
excites melancholy and vain terror to 
the wearer, but fortunately the month 
also possesses the cornelian, which 
cures these evils and also secures suc¬ 
cess, particularly in law suits. To 
August belongs the sardonyx, which 
brings riches to the wearer. To Sep¬ 
tember belongs the chrysolite. To 
October belongs the beryl, or aqua- 
marina, which renders the wearer suc¬ 
cessful in navigation and insures safe 
voyages. The opal also belongs to 
this month, a stone which unites the 
colors and qualities of all others, and 
has been beautifully called by a poet 
and artist, “ a pearl with a soul in it.” 
Its meaning is child-like, fairness and 
loveliness. November has the topaz, 
which signifies courage and cheerful¬ 
ness. It shows the presence of poison 


by loss of color; it gives light in the 
dark, and dispels enchantment, if 
worn on the left arm or around the 
neck. It also strengthens intellect 
and brightens wit. Those whose birth¬ 
day is in December have the choice 
between the ruby, turquoise or ma¬ 
lachite, or can wear all three. The 
ruby signifies passionate love and joy, 
and gives pleasant dreams; but it 
shortens the sleep of the wearer, and 
disturbs the circulation of the blood, 
inclining to anger. The turquoise is 
the noblest of opaque stones, and sig¬ 
nifies self-sacrificing love. It appeases 
hatred and reconciles lovers, and it 
relieves or prevents headaches. It also 
protects the wearer by drawing upon 
itself the evils that threaten him, 

becoming dark, dull, and apparently 

worthless,, but regaining its color 

gradually when the danger is past. 

This valuable property, however, be¬ 
longs to it only when given — not 
when bought. 


A VERY LARGE HOUSE. 

It is very doubtful whether in any 
other capital of Europe there is a 
house which can at all compare in size 
with the so-called u Freihaus,” free 
house, in the Wieden suburb of Vi¬ 
enna. If you have to look for a friend 
when you wish to visit there, you will 
wander about in it just as if you were 
in a town. A visitor relates that he 
was once two hours searching for 
a man whom he knew lived there. 
This large house has thirteen court¬ 
yards — five open ones and eight cov¬ 
ered in — and a large garden within 
walls. Some of the open court-yards 
are as large as the market places of 
moderate sized towns. The house 
itself, which covers an immense area, 
contains three hundred and thirty-five 









168 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


dwellings of which many contain five 
six, seven or more rooms. 

Scarcely a trade, handiwork or pro¬ 
fession can be named which has not 
its representative in this enormous 
house. Gold and silver workers, mak¬ 
ers of fancy articles, lodging-house 
keepers, book-binders, painters, agents, 
turners, hatters, officers, locksmiths, 
joiners, tutors, scientific men, govern¬ 
ment clerks, three bakers, eighteen 
tailors, and twenty-nine shoemakers 
all live in it. The house has thirty- 
one stair-cases, and on these alone are 
two hundred and thirty-five separate 
dwellings. It has a frontage on three 
streets and a square. A letter can 
only reach its proper address in this 
house when surname, Christian name, 
the number of the court, the number 
of the staircase, and the number of 
the apartment is written upon it. The 
postman has often delivered from two 
hundred to three hundred letters in 
this house. At the present time six¬ 
teen hundred persons live in this im¬ 
mense building, and these pay annually 
82,000 florins in rent. The “ Frei- 
haus” is not only remarkable for its 
size, but for several other interesting 
circumstances connected with it. In 
the middle of its garden stands the 
“ Mozart Hutte,” the cottage in which 
Mozart composed his u Zauberflote.” 
In the old (now no longer used) theatre 
of the Freihaus the same opera was 
performed for the first time. This 
theatre was situated in the center of 
the great court, No. 6, opposite the 
church — the house still possesses its 
own church — and was opened the 7th 
of October, 1786. 


The whole alphabet is in this one 
sentence of 48 letters: u John P. Brady 
gave me a black walnut box of quite a 
small size.” 


THE SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS. 


1. The brass Colossus at Rhodes, 
one hundred and twenty-one feet in 
hight, built by Chares, 258, A. D., occu¬ 
pying twenty years in making. It 
stood across the harbor at Rhodes 
sixty-six years, and was then thrown 
down by an earthquake. It was then 
bought by a Jew from the Saracens, 
who loaded nine hundred camels with 
the brass. 

2. The Pyramids of Egypt. The 
largest one engaged three hundred and 
sixty thousand workmen, was fifty 
years in building, and has now stood 
at least three thousand years. 

3. The Aqueducts of Rome, con¬ 
structed by Appius Claudius, the Cen¬ 
sor. 

4. Labyrinth of Psalmetichus, on 
the banks of the Nile, containing 
within one enclosure one thousand 
houses and twelve royal palaces, all 
covered with marble and having only 
one entrance. The building was said 
to contain three thousand chambers, 
and a hall built of marble, adorned 
with statues of the gods. 

5. The Pharos of Alexandria, a tower 
of Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the year 
172, B. C. It was built as a light-house, 
and contained many magnificent gal¬ 
leries of marble — a large lantern at 
the top, the light of which was seen 
nearly a hundred miles off. Mirrors of 
enormous size were fixed around the 
galleries, reflecting everything on the 
sea. A common tower is now erected 
in the same place. 

6. The Walls of Babylon, built by 
the order of Semiramis or Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar, and finished in one year by two 
hundred thousand men. They were of 
immense thickness. 

7. The Temple of Diana at Ephesus, 
completed in the reign of Servius, the 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


169 


sixth king of Rome. It was four 
hundred and fifty feet long, two hun¬ 
dred broad, and was supported by 
one hundred and twenty-three marble 
pillars. 


“HOUSEHOLD WORDS.”—ORIGIN OF 
FAMILIAR SAYINGS. 


Butler in his “ Dj^ets's Dry Dinner,” 
writing in 1599, says : u It is unsea¬ 
sonable and unwholesome in all months 
that have not an R in their name to 
eat an oyster.” 

The saying, “ to leave no stone un¬ 
turned,” may be traced to a response 
of the Delphic oracle, given to Poly¬ 
crates as the best means of finding a 
treasure buried by one of Xerxes’ gen¬ 
erals on the field of Platea. 

“Every man the architect of his 
own fortune,” is ascribed to Appius 
Claudius Csecus, the earliest Roman 
writer whose name has come down to 
us. In 312, B. C., he began the cele¬ 
brated “Appian Way from Rome to 
Capua” 

Of the well-known saying, “ Where 
the shoe pinches,” Plutarch relates the 
story of a human being divorced from 
his wife. This person being highly 
blamed by his friends, who demanded 
“Was she not chaste? was she not 
fair? ” holding out his shoe asked them 
whether it was not new and well 
made. “Yet,” added he, “none of 
you can tell where it pinches me.” 

The saying, “ When at Rome do as 
the Romans do,” is said to have arisen 
in this wise : Saint Augustine was in 
the habit of dining upon Saturday as 
on Sunday; but being puzzled with 
the different practices then prevailing 
(for they had begun to fast at Rome 
on Saturday), he consulted St. Ambrose 
on the subject. Now at Milan they 
did not fast on Saturday, but the 


answer of the Milan Saint was, “ When 
I am here I do not fast on Saturday; 
when at Rome I do fast on Saturday.” 

The Spectator says that Tobias 
Hobson was the first man in England 
that let out hackney horses. When a 
man came for a horse he was led into 
the stable where there was a great 
choice, but he obliged him to take the 
horse which stood next to the stable 
door; so that every customer was 
alike well served, according to his 
chance—from whence it became a 
proverb, when, what ought to be your 
election was forced upon you to say— 
“ Hobson’s choice.” 

Macaulay says that King Charles II. 
often remained in the Parliament 
while his speech was taken into con¬ 
sideration. The debates amused his 
sated mind and were sometimes, he 
used to say, “ as good as a play.” 

Hume in his “ History of England,” 
ascribed to William of Orange the 
saying, “ Die in the last ditch.” When 
Buckingham urged the inevitable de¬ 
struction which hung over the United 
Provinces, and asked him whether he 
did not see that the Commonwealth 
was ruined, he replied: “ There is one 
certain means by which I can be sure 
never to see my country’s ruin — I 
will die in the last ditch.” 

The expression “ Steal my thunder,” 
is familiar, and Disraeli accounts for it. 
The actors refused to perform one of 
John Denny’s tragedies to empty 
houses, but they retained some excel¬ 
lent thunder which Denny had in¬ 
vented, and rolled one night when 
Denny was in the pit, and it was 
applauded. Suddenly starting up, he 
called to the audience: “By G—, they 
won’t act my tragedy, but they steal 
my thunder.” 

The well known verse “ Thirty 
days hath September,” etc., is said to 






170 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


have first appeared in the “Abridge¬ 
ment of the Chronicles of England,” 
by Richard Gratton, 1500, under the 
title, “A rule to knowe how many 
dayes every moneth in the year 
hath.” 

“ No pent up Utica contracts our 
powers,” etc., were written by Jona¬ 
than M. Sewell, an American, about 
the beginning of the present century, 
and are to be found in an epilogue to 
“ Cato,” for the Bow Street Theater, 
Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 

“ By uniting we stand, by dividing 
we fall,” occurs in a stirring Liberty 
song, written by Dickinson in 1768. 

That celebrated modern political say¬ 
ing that “ To the victors belong the 
spoils,'' was first made by William L. 
Marcy, of New York, in a speech in 
the United States Senate in January, 
1832 “ First in war, first in peace, 

and first in the hearts of his country¬ 
men,” was written by Henry Lee, in 
resolutions presented to the House of 
Representatives, on the death of Wash¬ 
ington, 1799. 

“ What will Mrs. Grundy say ?” was 
first asked by Thomas Morton in his 
drama of “ Speed the Plow.” 

“ Plain as a pikestaff,” and “ Facts 
are stubborn things,” are found in 
Smollet’s translation of Gil Bias. 
“ Peace, peace, when there is no peace,” 
was quoted by Patrick Henry, in his 
celebrated speech, from the Bible — 
Jeremiah vi., 14. “ A living dog is 

better than a dead lion,” is also found 
in the Bible — Eccle. ix., 4. “In the 
midst of life we are in death,” com¬ 
monly supposed to be in the Bible, is 
found in the burial service in the Book 
of Common Prayer. “ God tempers 
the wind to the shorn lamb,” com¬ 
monly supposed to be in the Bible, was 
written by Laurence Sterne in his 
“Sentimental Journey.” 


NICKEL—ITS USE IN COINAGE. 


The people of this country have 
become somewhat familiarized with the 
name of the metal known as nickel, 
from its employment in the composi¬ 
tion of our lower class of coins. In¬ 
deed, our “lame duck” cents — so 
called from the abortive effigy of a 
flying eagle, resembling a duck fly¬ 
ing— are denominated “nickels,” from 
the known fact that nickel forms an 
important part in their composition. 
While the intention of the govern¬ 
ment in the coining of gold and silver 
is to give value for value received, and 
thus keep the intrinsic value of coins 
as a bar against the use of export of 
the precious metals except as coin, 
those coins composed of pure copper, 
or copper with alloj^s, were never in¬ 
tended to represent, by their weight 
and composition merely, the value of 
the metals employed. Such was, how¬ 
ever, nearly the case years ago, when a 
copper cent was about one-sixteenth 
or one-twentieth the weight of a pound 
of copper, when that metal was worth 
from 25 to 30 cents per pound; but 
our pure copper two-ceiit pieces, less 
than one-half the weight of an old- 
fashioned cent, bear now no proper 
relation to the market value of copper. 
Still, the object has been to keep our 
lower valued coins somewhere near the 
market price of the metals of which 
they are composed, and at the same 
time to prevent them from becoming 
inconveniently large; so nickel was 
introduced as a composition of cents 
in order to reduce their size, while pre¬ 
serving their value. 

Nickle is a brilliant, ductile, and 

malleable metal, discovered by Cron- 

stedt in 1751. It is found associated 

with cobalt and with iron in the ore. 

/ 

and is a common constituent with 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


171 


meteoric iron. The usual sources of 
supply are the arseniurets of nickel in 
cobalt, and in what the Germans call 
Wupfer nickel, or copper-nickel, contain¬ 
ing fifty-six per cent, of arsenic, and 
forty-four per cent of nickel. Nickel 
is found in Saxony, Thuringia, Hesse, 
Styria, Dauphine, and in Sweden. In 
this country its ores are found in 
Chatham, Connecticut, and in Lancas¬ 
ter, Penn., or rather about fourteen 
miles from the latter place; from 
which most of that used in the gov¬ 
ernment mints is obtained. Our nickel 
cents contain 88 parts copper and 12 
nickel. 

Nickel has been used for coinage 
also in Bavaria. It is valuable as an 
ingredient of the alloy known as Ger¬ 
man silver, the best of which is made 
of nickel, 3 parts ; zinc, 3^ parts ; and 
copper, 8. The Chinese tutenag also 
contains nickel, although often re¬ 
garded as zinc. The pakfong of the 
East Indies is also a composition of 
which nickel forms a part. Nickel is 
more fusible than iron, and like iron is 
rendered still more so by combination 
with carbon. It is magnetic at ordi¬ 
nary temperatures. Owing to its free¬ 
dom from oxidation in ordinary 
atmospheric temperatures, it has been 
used for the needles of compasses. It 
appears to have some marked points 
of resemblance to iron. 


FIRST UNITED STATES PATENTS. 

The first patent issued in the United 
States, of which there is any record, 
was granted to Samuel Hopkins, on 
July 31st, 1790, for making pot and 
pearl ashes; the second was to James 
Stacey Samson, on August 6th, 1790, 
for making candies ; and the third and 
last for the year 1790 was to Oliver 
Evans, for making flour and meal. 


SILK AND RIBBON WEAVING. 


This extremely versatile art appears 
to have had its origin in China, from 
the recorded fact that it was there 
practised more than a thousand years 
before it was known in Europe. Poets 
in ancient times ascribed the art to the 
spider, and doubtless that poor despised 
insect, with all its unsightliness, may 
even before man’s appearance on this 
globe, have been both spinner and 
weaver. Women originally spun, wove, 
and even performed the various opera¬ 
tions in dyeing, and the origin of these 
arts is ascribed by many ancient na¬ 
tions to different women as woman’s 
arts. 

The Egyptians ascribed the discovery 
or invention of weaving to Isis ; the 
Greeks to Minerva, the Goddess of 
Wisdom; and the Peruvians to the 
wife of Manco Copac; and in most 
Eastern countries the employment of 
weaving is still exclusively performed 
by women. 

Nearly two thousand years ago the 
art of weaving must have been in an 
advanced state. The earliest chroni¬ 
clers tell us that wrought silk was 
brought from Persia to Greece as early 
as three hundred and twenty-five years 
before Christ, and was known in Tibe¬ 
rius’ time, when a law was passed in 
the Senate prohibiting the use of plate 
of massy gold, and also forbidding men 
to debase themselves by wearing silk, 
“fit only for women.” Heliogabalus 
first wore a garment of silk A. D., 220. 
Silk was at first reckoned equal to gold 
in value, and was exchanged weight 
for weight, and was supposed to grow 
in the same manner as cotton on trees. 
The silk-worm was first introduced 
into Europe from India, in the sixth 
century. 

Silk mantles were worn in Great 








172 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Britain by some noblemen’s ladies, at 
a ball at Kenilworth Castle, in 1286. 

The art of weaving received great 
encouragement from Roger, King of 
Sicily, at Palermo, in 1130, when the 
Sicilians not only bred silkworms, but 
also spun and wove the silk. In 1331, 
two weavers from Brabant settled at 
York, England, where they manu¬ 
factured woolens, which, says King 
Charles, “may prove of great benefit 
to us and our subjects.” The manu¬ 
facture of woven fabrics had also 
spread into Italy, Spain and the south 
of France, a little before the reign of 
Francis the First, about the year 1570. 
Henry the 6th, in 1589, had mulberry 
trees introduced throughout his king¬ 
dom, purposely for the propagation of 
silk worms. The first pair of silk 
stockings brought into England from 
Spain were worn by King Henry VIII. 
and in the reign of Queen Mary a 
special act was passed to prevent 
servant maids from wearing ribbons 
on their bonnets. Silk was also worn 
by the English clergy in 1534. 

The ribbon trade was first intro¬ 
duced in England about a century and 
a half ago. The manufacture was 
confined to a few hands for many years 
before it spread itself into a larger 
sphere. 

The single-hand loom, or rather the 
single-shuttle loom, at first used, grad¬ 
ually gave way to the many-shuttle 
loom, or engine-loom. This descrip¬ 
tion of machinery consisted for a long 
time only of the old-fashioned Dutch 
loom, a specimen of which would now 
be as much of a rarity as would have 
been a batten containing six tiers of 
shuttles to those old weavers of a cen¬ 
tury back. 

Important improvements were made 
in the art from time to time, especially 
in figured work and the introduction 


of the big pearl, a golden harvest time 
in the memory of some of our oldest 
weavers. The advance of this class of 
manufacture was more prominently 
distinguishable between the years 1818 
and 1822, when manufacturers and op¬ 
eratives strained every energy to excel 
all their former efforts, as to design 
as well as workmanship. 


SILK MANUFACTURE OF LYONS. 

France possesses within her own 
bounds three out of the four fibrous 
substances from which clothing is 
made — she has flax, wool and silk. 
The latter, which employs so many 
people at Lyons, is grown further 
south. The silk is separated from the 
cocoons, and is spun in other districts. 
The trade of Lyons consists of weav¬ 
ing cloth from the thread which is 
brought into the town. The silk 
grown in France is not sufficient to 
supply the demand, and she imports 
raw silk from Italy. The culture of 
silk receives considerable attention in 
France, where the government seems 
to act upon the idea expressed in the 
China laws, which point out two 
classes as deserving the gratitude of all 
— the grower of corn and the grower 
of silk, the former supplying food, the 
latter clothing. Lyons has none of 
the peculiarities which we usually 
connect with a manufacturing town. 
There are no tall chimneys, no dingy 
warehouses, no immense factories, no 
smoke. The looms are light, and are 
erected in the houses of the people. 
They are worked by hand. Thus you 
do not see at certain hours busy masses 
of people flowing to and from the 
same spot. The work goes on quietly. 
A good deal of it is (as the silks are 
narrow and the throw of the shuttle 
short) done by women. 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


173 


The price paid for weaving plain 
bilks is about fourteen cents per yard ; 
for rich and flowered silks it is more. 
The silk manufacture of France origi¬ 
nated in the luxury of the Court of 
Francis I. In addition to that grown 
in France, the imports of raw silk 
were, in 1792, 136,000 pounds. The 
manufacture had increased so much 
that the quantity imported in 1851 
had increased to 2,291,500 pounds; or 
about seventeen fold. Lyons has on 
several occasions been the scene of 
trade outbreaks, in consequence of 
attempts to introduce machinery or to 
alter the rate ot wages. The cost of 
carrying coal will always operate in 
favor of manual labor. Great Britain 
offers a large and increasing market. 
She used to import raw silk and manu¬ 
facture it in England, but the importa¬ 
tion of raw silk nas decreased, and 
silk manufacturing has lessened. The 
imports of raw silk have lessened one- 
half, of silks from India to one-fourth, 
while the import of silks from Europe 
has increased nearly tenfold, and that 
of ribbons has doubled. The Lyonese 
silk weavers comprise about 120,000, 
out of a population of 300,000. 


DIRECT YOUR LETTERS CAREFULLY. 

The Postal Record says that during 
the year 1874 there were sent to the 
dead letter office nearly 3,000,000 let¬ 
ters. Sixty-eight thousand of these 
letters could not be forwarded owing to 
the carelessness of the writers omitting 
to give the county or State; 400,000 
failed to be sent because the writers 
forgot to put on stamps, and over 
3,000 letters were put in the post-office 
without any address whatever. In the 
letters above named was found over 
$92,000 in cash ; drafts, checks, etc., to 
the value of $3,000,000. There were 


39,089 photographs contained in the 
above letters. Of course nearly all the 
money and valuables were returned to 
the owners; but much needless delay, 
many charges of dishonesty, etc., etc., 
might have been saved if the writers 
of the letters would have been a little 
more careful, and taken the precaution 
to see that their letters were in maila¬ 
ble condition before depositing them in 
the post-office. It is more than proba¬ 
ble that nine-tenths of all the com¬ 
plaints, losses and delays which are 
laid to the post-office department are 
in reality due to the carelessness of 
letter writers. 


WHO WORE THE FIRST RING? 

“ Conclusive evidence is not obtain¬ 
able,” remarks a recent writer, u when 
rings were first used.” But one fact is 
plain — they are of great antiquity, 
were always worn as tokens of trust, 
insignia of command, pledges of faith 
and alliance, and, equally strange, 
marks of servitude. The religious 
system of Zoroaster is exceedingly 
ancient, and in some of the old sculpt¬ 
ures of that sect, images hold a ring, 
indicative of omnipotence and power. 
And to this day, the Persians, Hindoos, 
and all the Eastern nations, attach 
great significance to the ring. The 
Egyptians were particularly fond of 
this ornament. There are specimens 
in the Museum of the Louvre. Some 
of them date as far back as the reign 
of Moeris. At the British Museum 
there is an exceedingly fine specimen. 
This is a ring of the finest gold, of 
the Ptolemic or Roman period, with 
figures of Serapis, Isis and Horus. 
The same collection has also others of 
a similar metal, set with the scarabaeus 
or sacred beetle. Others have the 
names of Thothmes III. and Rameses 











174 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


III. The most ancient ring in exist¬ 
ence is that formerly worn by Cheops, 
the builder of the great pyramid, 
found in a tomb in the vicinity of that 
monument, of the finest gold, with 
hieroglyphics. Sundry passages of 
Holy Writ prove the antiquit} r of 
rings. When Pharoah confided the 
charge of all Egypt to Joseph, he 
took the ring from his finger and 
committed it to him as a symbol of 
command. Ahasuerus did it in like 
manner to his favorite, Haman, and 
subsequently to Mordecai. The im¬ 
pression of the monarch’s ring had the 
force of a command. “Write ye also 
for the Jews, as it liketh you, in the 
king’s name, and seal it with the king’s 
ring; for the writing which is written 
in the king’s name and sealed with the 
king’s ring, may no man reverse.” 
Rings among the God-favored people, 
when used as seals, were called “ ta- 
boath,” the name of a root, signifying 
to imprint and also to seal. They 
were commonly worn on the little 
finger of the right hand. 


TO PREVENT POLISHED MATERIALS 
FROM TARNISHING. 

The following composition has proved 
efficient after several trials. Put half 
an ounce of solid pai*affin into a glass 
with a wide opening, and let it melt 
in boiling water; then add one and a 
half ounce of petroleum; shake the 
mixture, after having corked the glass, 
until it becomes a cold ointment. In 
using, cover the metal with it, and 
wipe off afterwards the greater portion, 
so that the polish be little affected. 
Both matters form a carburetted hy¬ 
drogen compound, which is unaffected 
by moisture and the oxygen in the air. 
A thin coat is sufficient to prevent 
polished metals from tarnishing. 


INLAID PEARL. 


Cast and sheet-iron and papier mache 
are the materials upon which pearl is 
generally inlaid. The process is as 
follows:—If the article be of cast- 
iron, it is well cleaned from the sand 
which usually adheres to the casting, 
and is blackened with a coat of varnish 
and lamp-black. When this is thor¬ 
oughly dried, a coat of japan or black 
varnish is spread evenly upon it. Be-* 
fore the varnish becomes too dry, pieces 
of pearl cut in the form of leaves, 
roses, or such flowers as the fancy of 
the artist may dictate, or the character 
of the article may require, are laid upon 
the varnish, and pressed down with the 
finger, and they immediately adhere to 
the varnished surface. The work is 
then placed in a heated oven and kept 
there several hours, or until the var¬ 
nish is perfectly dried. It is then 
taken from the oven and another coat 
of varnish applied indiscriminately on 
the surface of the pearl and the pre¬ 
vious coating, and again placed in the 
oven till dry. This process is repeated 
several times. The varnish is then 
scraped off the pearl with a knife, and 
the surface of the pearl and the var¬ 
nish around it is found to be quite 
even. The pearl is then polished with 
a piece of pumice stone and water, and 
the surface of the varnish is rubbed 
smooth with powdered pumice stone, 
moistened with water. It is in this 
unfinished state that the pearl has the 
appearance of being inlaid, and from 
which it derives its name. Its final 
beauty and finish depend altogether 
on the skill of the artist who now 
receives it. Under his hands the 
shapeless and almost unmeaning pieces 
of pearl are made to assume the form 
of beautiful flowers, leaves, etc. The 
artist traces the stems and leaves of 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


175 


the flowers with a cameTs-hair pencil, 
clipped in a size made of varnish and 
turpentine. Upon this he lays gold 
leaf, which adheres where there is siz£, 
and the superfluous gold is carefully 
brushed off with a piece of silk. The 
flowers and leaves are then painted in 
colors, and when dry the picture and 
surface of the article is covered with a 
coat of refined white varnish. 

SPONGE. 

The best sponges for toilet use come 
from the iEgean and are found in 
about eight fathoms of water. They 
are gathered by a brotherhood of div¬ 
ers, who inhabit the islands off the 
Carian coast, and those between 
Rhodes and Calymnos. A coarse qual¬ 
ity of sponge is found on the coast 
of Florida and the West Indies. These 
are gathered by longshafted forks. To 
remove the sarcode, the sponge is hur¬ 
ried for some days in the sand until the 
animal matter rots, and then the horny 
keratose is soaked and washed. Many 
varieties of sponge are found in warm 
seas, but that of commerce is almost 
exclusively derived from the Grecian 
Archipelago, Lyria, Barbary, and the 
West Indies. The Lyrian or Turkish, 
also known as toilet sponge is most es¬ 
teemed. Next in value and closely re¬ 
sembling it is that fram the Grecian 
Archipelago. Coarser varieties valuable 
on account of their firmness and tenacity 
come from Greece and Barbary. That 
from the West Indies is harsher, coarser, 
and less durable than the Mediterranean 
kinds. In sponge-fishing, three meth¬ 
ods—spearing, diving and dredging 
are employed. The Greeks, who are 
the most skillful and successful sponge- 
fisliers, employ small boats, carrying a 
rower and spearman, the latter of whom 
views the bottom through a tin tube, 


furnished with a sheet of glass at the 
lower end, which is held beneath the 
surface of the water. He manages to 
transfix sponges at a depth of sixty feet 
by using three or four spears, thrown 
with such quickness and accuracy that 
the end of the first is struck by the 
second, before it disappears beneath the 
surface, imparting an additional impet¬ 
us and enabling it to reach the sponge. 
The knack of using three or four spears 
has not been acquired by the Arabs or 
Sicillians. 

SPOONS. 

Ancient Egyptian spoons were made 
shell-shaped of glass, stone, marble, 
wood, shell, and ivory, and many of them 
handsomely carved. A number are in 
the Abbott Collection New York 
brought from a tomb at Abouseer (1430, 
B. C. ) Sakkarah, and elsewhere. From 
the collections of Wilkinson, Burton, 
and Salt, they are of bronze, wood, and 
requently gilt. Some of the handles 
were hinged, others have sliding collars. 
The Greeks used spoons at meals. The 
cochlear had a pointed end for picking 
snails out of the shells and a flatter end 
for eating eggs. 


HOW GUNPOWDER IS MADE. 

How do you think you would like 
to live fearing every moment to be 
blown up; none daring to speak 
aloud, to jar anything, for fear of 
starting an explosion that would send 
you in an instant to the other world ? 

You don’t think it would be very 
pleasant? Well, it isn’t; yet hun¬ 
dreds of men live in just that state — 
work, receive pay, and live, year after 
year, in the very sight of death, as it 
were — all that the world may have 
gunpowder. You can easily guess 











176 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


that these men go about quietly, and 
never laugh. 

You know that gunpowder is very 
dangerous in a gun or near a fire ; but 
perhaps you don’t know that it is 
equally dangerous all through the pro¬ 
cess of making. A powder mill is a 
fearful place to visit, and strangers 
are very seldom allowed to go into one. 
They are built far from any town, in 
the woods, and each branch of the 
work is done in a separate building. 
These houses are quite a distance from 
each other, so that if one blows up it 
won't blow up the rest. The lower 
parts of the building are made very 
strong, while the roofs are very light¬ 
ly set on, so that if it explodes only 
the roof will suffer. But, in spite of 
every care, sometimes a whole settle¬ 
ment of the powder-mills will go off 
almost in an instant, and every vestige 
of the toil of years will be swept away 
in a second. 

But, though you feel like holding 
your breath to look at it, it is realty 
a very interesting process to see. Pow¬ 
der is made, perhaps you know, of 
charcoal, saltpetre and brimstone. 
Each of these articles is prepared in a 
house by itself, but the house where 
they are mixed is the first terrible one. 
In this building is an immense mill¬ 
stone, rolling round and round in an 
iron bed, and under the stone are put 
the three fearful ingredients of gun¬ 
powder. There they are thoroughly 
mixed and ground together. This is a 
very dangerous operation, because if 
the stone comes in contact with its 
iron bed it is very apt to strike fire, 
and the merest suspicion of a spark 
would set off the wliole. The mate¬ 
rials are spread three or four inches in 
the bed; the wheel, which goes by 
water power, is started, and every man 
leaves the place. The door is shut, and 


the machinery is left to do its terrible 
work alone. When it has run long 
enough, the mill is stopped, and the 
men come back. This operation leaves 
the powder in hard lumps or cakes. 

The next house is where the cakes 
are broken into grains, and, of course, 
is quite as dangerous as the last one. 
But the men can’t go away from this, 
they are obliged to attend to it every 
moment; and you may be sure not a 
laugh or a joke is ever heard within 
its walls. 

Every one who goes in has to take 
off his boots and put on rubbers, be¬ 
cause one grain of the dangerous pow¬ 
der, crushed by the boot, would explode 
the whole in an instant. 

The floor of this house is covered 
with leather, and is made perfectly 
black by the dust of the gunpowder. 
It contains a set of seives, each one 
smaller than the last, through which 
the powder is sifted; and an immense 
ground and laboring mill, where it is 
ground up, while men shovel it in 
wooden shovels. The machinery makes 
a great deal of noise, but the men are 
silent, as in the other houses. The 
reckless crashing of the machinery 
even seems to give greater horror, and 
one is very glad to get out of that 
house. 

The stoving-room is next on the list, 
and there the gunpowder is heated on 
wooden trays. It is very hot, and no 
workmen stay there. From there it 
goes to the packing-house, where it is 
put in barrels, kegs and canisters. 

Lastly, through all these houses, it 
goes at last to the store-house. One 
feels like drawing a long breath to see 
the fearful stuff packed away out of 
the hands of men, in this curious 
house. 

You’ve heard of things being as dry 
as a powder house, but you would not 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


177 


think this very dry. It is almost im¬ 
bedded in water. Did you ever hear 
of a water roof before ? Instead of 
steps to go in, there are shallow tanks 
of water, through which every one 
must walk to the door. 

In none of these powder houses is 
any light ever allowed except sunlight. 
The wages are good, the day’s work is 
short, ending at three or four o’clock. 
But the men have a serious look, that 
makes one think every moment of the 
danger, and glad to get away. 


STAIN FOR THE SAP OF BLACK 
WALNUT. 

Take 1 gallon of strong vinegar, 
1 pound dry burnt umber, £ pound 
fine rose pink, i pound dry burnt 
Van-dyke brown. Put them into a 
jug and mix them well; let the mix¬ 
ture stand one day and it will then be 
ready for use. Apply this stain to 
the sap with a piece of fine sponge; 
it will dry in half an hour. The 
whole piece is then ready for the fill¬ 
ing process. When the work is com¬ 
pleted, the stain part cannot be detect¬ 
ed even by those who have performed 
the job. This receipt is of value, as 
by it wood of poor quality and mostly 
of sap can be used with good effect. 

WESTERN RIVERS. 

The Mississippi river is 2,616 miles 
in length, and is 1,680 feet above the 
level of the Gulf at its utmost source. 
At St. Paul it is 660 feet above the 
Gulf level; at the head of Rock Island 
rapids, 505 feet; at Saint Louis, 407 
feet; at Cairo, 322; at Memphis, 221 
feet; at Natches, 66 feet; at New Or¬ 
leans, 15 feet; and at the head of the 
of the Passes, 2 feet 9 inches. Arkan¬ 
sas river rises 1,514 miles from its en¬ 
trance into the Mississippi, and 10,000 


feet above the Gulf level; at Fort 
Smith it is 418 feet above the Gulf; at 
Little Rock, 252 feet, and at its mouth, 
162 feet. The Missouri river rises 
2,908 miles above its entrance into the 
Mississippi, and 6,800 feet above the 
Gulf level; at Fort Benton it is 2,815 
above the Gulf; at Sioux City, 1,065 
feet, and at St. Joseph, 756 feet. The 
Ohio is 609 feet above the Gulf at 
Pittsburgh, and 532 at Cincinnati. 


THE OLDEST TIMBER. 

Probably the oldest timber in the 
world which has been subjected to the 
use of man is that which has been 
found in the ancient temples of Egypt. 
It is found in connection with stone 
work which is known to be at least 
4,000 years old. This wood, and the 
only wood used in the construction of 
the temple, is in the form of ties, hold¬ 
ing the end of one stone to another in 
its upper surface. When two blocks 
were laid in place, then it appears that 
an excavation about an inch deep was 
made in each block, into which an 
hour-glass shaped tie was driven. It 
is, therefore, very difficult to force any 
stone from its position. The ties ap¬ 
pear to have been tamarisk or sliittim 
wood, of which the ark was constructed, 
a sacred tree in ancient Egypt, and 
now very rarely found in the valley of 
the Nile. Those dovetailed ties are 
just as sound now as on the day of 
their insertion. Although fuel is ex¬ 
tremely scarce in that country, these 
bits of wood are not large enough to 
make it an object with the Arabs to 
heave off layer after layer of heavy 
stone for so small a prize. Had they 
been of bronze, half the old temples 
would have been destroyed years ago, 
so precious would they have been for 
various purposes. 













178 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


REMOVING A TIGHT FINGER RING. 


It is seldom necessary to file off a 
ring which is too tight to readily pass 
the joint of the finger. If the finger 
is swollen, apply cold water to reduce 
the inflammation, then wrap a small 
rag, wet in hot water, around the ring 
to expand the metal, and soap the 
finger. A needle threaded with strong 
silk can then be passed between the 
ring and finger, and a person holding 
the two ends and pulling the silk while 
slowly sliding it around the periphery 
of the ring may readily remove the 
ring. If the ring is a plain hoop this 
process is easy ; if it has a setting or 
protuberance more care will be re¬ 
quired. Another method is to pass a 
piece of sewing silk under the ring 
and wind the thread, in pretty close 
spirals and snugly, around the finger 
to the end. Then take the lower end 
— that below the ring—and begin 
unwinding. The ring is certain to be 
removed unless the silk is very weak. 
The winding compresses the finger and 
renders the operation less difficult. 


AN OLD ENGLISH PATENT. 

It is said that the following is the 
first patent ever granted in England, 
for the preservation of food: u A. D. 
1691, Oct. 7, No. 278. Porter Thomas 
and White John.—A grant unto them 
of the sole use, exercise and benefit of 
their new invencon of keeping and 
preserving by liquors or otherwise all 
sorts of flesh, fowle and fish, and many 
other things, either in pieces or in 
whole bodyes, at a cheaper rate, for 
many years in all clymates, without 
changing the nature, quality, taste, 
smell or color thereof, as good, palatar 
ble and wholesome, to be eaten and 
made use of for any intent and purpose 


whatsoever, as when first killed or put 
into such liquor; to hold and enjoy 
the same for 14 years, according to the 
statute.” Can any modern patent beat 
this ? 


MODES OF SALUTATION. 

xn the East the people are pastoral, 
unwarlike, fond of quiet, and are also 
encircled by religious ideas. We see 
this in the simple meeting of persons 
in the street. They convey — in the 
form of prayer — an earnest wish that 
the other may enjoy peace. Through¬ 
out the Bible this blessing forms the 
staple of salutation. Salem or Shalum 
means peace, and is doubtless the 
meaning in the word Jerusalem. The 
Bedouins of our time have the same 
idea embodied in their salutations. 
The Arab meets his friend thus : 44 May 
God grant you a happy morning ; ” 
44 May God grant you his favors ; ” If 
God wills it, you are well.” 

The difference here is very consider¬ 
able, according to the rank of the per¬ 
son saluted. The most common mode 
is merely laying the right hand on the 
bosom, and inclining the body a little; 
but when to a person of great rank, 
they bow almost to the ground, and 
kiss the hem of his garment. Inferi¬ 
ors, out of deference and respect, kiss 
the feet, the knees, or the garments of 
their superiors. 

The dominant trait in the character 
of the Ottoman is known to be great 
pride, much gravity, and apparently 
a considerable distaste to the use of his 
tongue in speech. It will be noticed 
in many of his sayings that those 
three are often unfolded. 44 May your 
shadow never be less,” shows how they 
value flesh. 

In Egypt the climate is so very warm 
and feverish, and perspiration is so 











179 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


very necessary to health, that an 
Egyptian greeting is, “How do you 
perspire ?” According to Herodotus, 
the Egyptians saluted by letting the 
hand fall to the knee, unlike anj other 
nation. 

The Laplanders apply their nose 
strongly against that of the person 
they salute. Dampire sa}^ that at 
New Guinea they are satisfied to put 
on their heads the leaves of trees, 
which have ever passed for symbols of 
friendship and peace. 

The Spaniard wishes you “ Good 
morning, 1 ’ “ God be with you, Senor.” 

The Neapolitan devoutly says, “Grow 
in sanctity.” 

The Piedmontese, “I am your ser¬ 
vant.” 

The Genoese of modern times says, 
“Health and wealth.” 

The Romans, who were robust had 
energetic salutations, expressing force : 
“Salve;” “Be strong ;” “Be healthy;” 
“ Quid agis “ What do you do ?” or 
“ What make you ?” 

The Chinaman, with earnest solici¬ 
tude, asks, “Is your stomach in good 
order ?” “ Have you eaten ?” 

The German says, “Wie gehts ?” 
“How goes it?” To bid adieu, he 
says, “ Leben sie wohl!” —“ May you 
live well.” 

The Pole embraces the knees and 
and shoulder, and in departure says, 
“ Be ever well.” 

“ In Hungary they say at departure, 
“ May you remain well;” “ God keep 
you well.” 

In Servia they say: “ How are 

acorns ? ” Or, “ Are acorns plenty ? ” 
They being a pastoral people. 

In Turkey, great attention is paid 
to salutation ; the arms are laid over 
other, each on his own breast, and each 
bending the head. 

In Sweden, besides the universal 


“ Gud day,” which needs no transla¬ 
tion, they ask, “ Hura mar Ni ?” Lit¬ 
erally, “How can you?” meaning, 
“ Are you strong and vigorous ? ” 
Also, “God sei tava!” “God be 
praised!” Their parting is, “ Far val.” 

The Moors of Morocco ride at full 
speed toward a stranger, as if to run 
him down; as soon as they have ap¬ 
proached near, they stop suddenly and 
fire a pistol over his head. 

The manner of saluting the great 
Mogul is to touch, with the hand, first 
the earth, then the breast, and then lift 
it above, which is repeated three times 
in succession, as you approach him. 

The Hindoos bend the head to the 
earth. 


ORIGIN OF IRON BRIDGES. 

The London Quarterly, in alluding 
to the varied applications of iron, gives 
Thomas Paine the credit of being the 
inventor of iron bridges. It states 
that when he resided in Philadelphia, 
in 1787, he proposed to erect a bridge 
over the Schuylkill river, and that it 
should be of great span, without piers 
(so as not to be obstructed with ice). 
Paine boldly offered to build an iron 
bridge with a single arch of 400 feet 
span. In the same year, he went to 
Europe and sent a copy of his plan to 
Sir Joshua Banks, in London, who 
submitted it to the Royal Society. 
Paine then went to the Rotherham 
Iron Works, in Yorkshire, to have 
the design of his bridge carried out. 
Segments of an arch of 410 feet 
span were made of cast and wrought 
iron. The castings were then shipped 
off to London and erected on a bowl¬ 
ing-green, at Paddington. It was 
there visited by a large number of 
persons and regarded as a great suc¬ 
cess. Paine, being poor, became debtor 









180 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


for the castings, but his creditors at 
last agreed to take back the castings, 
and they used them on a bridge erected 
over the river Wear, at Sunderland, 
where it was erected in 1794. This 
bridge was long regarded as the great¬ 
est triumph of art. Its span exceeded 
that of any then existing stone arch, 
being 236 feet, with a rise of tnirty- 
four feet, the springing commencing 
ninetv-five feet above the bed of the 

ts 

river, allowing vessels of 300 tons 
burden to sail underneath without 
striking their masts. u If,” says Mr. 
Stephenson, “ we are to consider Paine 
as its author, his daring in engineering 
certainly does full justice to the fervor 
of his political career; for, successful 
as the result has undoubtedly proved, 
want of experience and consequent 
ignorance of the risk could alone have 
induced so bold an experiment; and 
we are rather led to wonder at than 
to admire a structure which, as regards 
its proportions and the small quantity 
of material employed in its construc¬ 
tion, will probabty remain unrivaled.” 


MUSTARD. 

Mustard seed was used medicinally 
by the Greeks, and held by them in 
such estimation that the discovery of 
its medicinal value was attributed to 
iEsculapius. It would be difficult to 
determine satisfactorily when it was 
first used as a condiment in this coun¬ 
try, but it seems probable that its 
employment dates from about the time 
of the Saxons. It does not appear 
generally to have been ground up, as 
it is at the present time, but was 
usually eaten whole, a practice that at 
least protected the consumer from 
adulteration. Girarde says : — “ The 
seede of mustard, pounded with vine¬ 
gar, is an exellent sauce, good to be 


eaten with any grosse meates, either 
fish or flesh, because it doth help diges¬ 
tion, warmeth the stomacke and pro- 
voketh appetite.” At the present time 
vinegar and spices enter into the com¬ 
position of the French mustard, and 
contribute to its keeping qualities. 
Mustard is not a fancy condiment; it 
has distinct hygienic value. A French 
writer thus speaks of it: 

u Of all the condiments used at table 
for giving flavor to meat, for stimula¬ 
ting the appetite, and disguising the 
faults of cooks, mustard is without 
doubt that which occupies the first 
rank, not only from its antiquity, 
which dates back to the time of the 
Hebrews, but also from its beneficial 
qualities. According to medical author¬ 
ity this condiment, the dietetic use of 
which is so general, greatly assists the 
organs of digestion. It augments, by 
the slight irritation it causes, the 
strength and elasticity of the fibres, it 
excites in the stomach and intestines 
the digestive juices, and promotes the 
passage of the residues of food by 
accelerating the peristaltic movement. 

u Mustard agrees, therefore, with 
indolent, lymphatic, and weak stom¬ 
achs. It is wholesome to those whose 
stomachs and intestines are torpid, and 
hence it is especially useful to aged 
persons.” 

Previous to the year 1720, mustard 
was prepared for use by pounding the 
seeds in a mortar, and roughly sepa¬ 
rating the integuments; but it is said 
to have occurred to a woman named 
Clements, of Durham, to grind the 
seed, and then dress the flour. The 
mustard so prepared was superior to 
any other, received royal patronage, 
and enjoyed an extensive sale; the 
process was kept a secret and a fortune 
realized. Hence, Durham mustard be¬ 
came celebrated, and the name was 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


181 


long retained by makers to indicate 
mustard of a superior quality. Thus 
far efforts were directed to the manu¬ 
facture of a pure mustard ; but all this 
has long since undergone a great 
change, and now, looking over a manu¬ 
facturer’s list of qualities, we see a 
great variety, from a mustard flavored 
with flour to a flour flavored with 
mustard. 

After discussing the value and rea¬ 
sons given for the mixture of mustard 
with common flour, a practice he finds 
no excuse for, the writer quoted con¬ 
tinues :— In a former paper I have 
shown that the flour of the black seed 
is the essential constituent of mus¬ 
tard, and to the production of its vol¬ 
atile oil the pungency is due; that 
white mustard yields the milder flour ; 
and also the theory of its addition to 
the black in definite proportions. I 
have likewise alluded to the process 
for detecting by the microscope the 
presence of flour and tumeric in com¬ 
mercial samples ; but this is not all 
that a thorough examination of mus¬ 
tard, even when pure and free from 
flour, involves; care must be taken 
to determine the relative quantity 
of black and white, as the latter in too 
great a quantity is also a diluent, 
though not an adulterant. 

In mustard the distinction should 
always be borne in mind between 
genuineness and quality. A genuine 
mustard may be made of any quality 
and to suit any price, dependent 
mainly on the relative proportions of 
white flour to the black. The large 
white seed costs less as seed and gives 
more flour than the black; and on 
reference to trade circulars it will be 
seen that genuine mustards range from 
9d. to Is. 6d. per lb. In some cases the 
mustard sold at a low price as genuine 
is composed of the white flour alone. 


HISTORY OF BEARDS. 


Interwoven, tangled we may say, 
with almost everything we examine, 
whether of ancient or modern times, 
we find the great beard question. 

To go to the root of the matter, we 
must in point of fact, go to the root of 
the beard : The anatomist informs us 
that the hair is a horny substance, a 
hollow, cylindrical, slightly tapering 
body, with tubular roots growing from 
vascular pulps, pulp and roots enclosed 
in bulb-shaped capsules implanted in 
the substance of the true skin; exter¬ 
nally, these bulbs are tough and fibrous. 
Next comes a spongy cellular mass, 
into the cells of which the nourishing 
vessels pour their blood. Bichat has 
described an inter-cellular communica¬ 
tion in hair, similar to that of the 
ascending sap in vegetables. 

The importance of the question, “ to 
wear or not to wear,*’ can perhaps be 
shown in no better way than by the 
statement of the fact, that a man of 
50 years will on an average have cut 
off eight feet of beard and thirteen 
feet of scalp-hair. Cutting and shav¬ 
ing the beard have on this account 
been deprecated by many physiologists, 
as tending to weaken the strength by 
the general drain of blood ; to dimin¬ 
ish the intellect by diverting blood 
from the brain; and to diminish the 
reproductive power by an unknown 
sympathy. 

It might be, and is urged in answer to 
this, that many, nay, most, great mil¬ 
itary commanders — Alexander, Napo¬ 
leon, Wellington, Washington — and 
poets — Dante, Milton, Goethe Cole¬ 
ridge, Schiller, Byron, Scott, Tenny¬ 
son, etc., and statesmen, as Franklin, 
Webster, Pitt and Tallyrand ; men of 
science, theologians, philosphers, sculp¬ 
tors, musicians, painters, popes, and 








182 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


reformers innumerable, have been 
beardless men. But not to mention 
the illustrious wearers of the beard — 
Surenne, Raleigh, Drake, Clarendon, 
Pericles, Bacon, Demosthenes, Crom¬ 
well, and Johnson, Shakespeare,Rubens, 
Galileo, Michael Angelo, Da Vinci, 
with Keppler, Calvin, Solinski, Lieb- 
nitz, Sir Matthew Hale, and a host of 
the hirsute — there is a strong argu¬ 
ment for retaining the beard in the 
consideration of the annual expendi¬ 
ture which is incurred by the nation 
by this practice of shaving. 

Nations having little or no beard, 
generally pluck out or shave off the 
straggling hairs from the face. We 
are familiar with the beardless face of 
the American Indians. It has been a 
custom with them for long ages to 
remove all signs of beard. 

The Chinese form a remarkable ex¬ 
ception to this rule ; though by nature 
destitute, or nearly so, of hair on their 
faces, they regard the possession of this 
appendage as desirable, and carefully 
cultivate the scanty crop which they 
do possess, not suffering the razor to 
glide over their chins. 

The Greeks wore beards from the 
earliest times. All the great heroes 
and philosophers of Athens and Sparta 
were bearded. 

Among the Romans shaving was 
unknown till the year of the City 474, 
or 300, B. C., when the first barbers 
were brought to Rome from Sicily ; 
but it was long before the practice 
became general. It grew into favor 
gradually, and at the time of Hadrian, 
117, A. D., was universal. This Empe¬ 
ror, however, wore a beard to conceal 
the scars on his face; and fashion, 
usually so imperious, yielded to the 
will of one stronger than herself. 
Chins became suddenly invisible. 

Great attention was paid by the 


Romans to the beard, as among women 
to the hair of the head; while the 
latter spent hour after hour in the 
careful binding up of towers of hair, 
and the men were no less earnestly 
employed in combing, curling, and 
annointing their beards. Seneca com¬ 
plains that the Roman youth ran to 
excess in the attention which they 
paid to dressing their beards. 

It was the custom to present the 
first growth of the beard to some god, 
usually to the Lares. On the occasion 
of the consecration of a young man’s 
beard, his friends made entertainments 
for him ; it was a regular festival day ; 
all business was laid aside, he received 
presents, and made and expected visits 
of ceremony. 

The Turks esteem the beard the most 
noble ornament of man, they consider 
it more infamous for anv one to have 
his beard cut off, than among us to be 
publicly whipped, pilloried, or branded 
with hot iron ; there are not a few in 
that country who would prefer death 
to this kind of punishment. To pull, 
or irreverently handle the beard is a 
deadly insult. Turkish wives kiss their 
husbands’ beards, and children, their 
fathers’, as often as they come to 
salute them. 

In Germany the custom of wearing 
beards was never altered ; such beards 
as were worn by their ancestors, who 
came with the Aser from Asia with 
Odin, are worn now by the Germans. 

The Crusades took from Europe 
some of her best beards : Geoffry sur- 
named the hoarded , and Baldwin IV., 
called “handsome beard,' 1 were the 
most remarkable. “William Fitzos- 
bert, or Longbeard, the great dema¬ 
gogue of that day, reintroduced among 
the people who claimed to be of Saxon 
origin, the custom of wearing long 
beards. He did this to make them as 







183 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF. INFORMATION. 


much as possible unlike the Normans. 
He wore his own beard hanging down 
to his waist, from whence the name by 
which he is best known to posterity.” 

A painter named John Mayo lived 
at the court of Charles Y. of Ger¬ 
many; he was a very tall man; his 
beard, which he confined in a girdle 
to his waist, reached to his feet and 
swept the ground, when he loosened 
it. In France the beard was worn 
during the reign of Henry of Navarre; 
but his successor, Louis XIII., was a 
young boy; immediately the luxuriant 
beards of the preceding reign dropped 
away to a small tuft under the lower 
lip. Sully, the prime minister of 
Henry IV. kept his long beard, and 
was ridiculed for so doing by some of 
the young; turning to the king, he 
said: “Sir, when your father, of glo¬ 
rious memory, did me the honor to 
consult me on his great and important 
affairs, the first thing he did was to 
send away all the buffoons and stage 
dancers of his court.” 

The Germans have a legend of Fred¬ 
eric Barbarossa, that he is not dead, but 
in an enchanted sleep, sitting with his 
knights at a marble table in the cavern 
of Kyffhausen, in the Hartz mount¬ 
ains. His long red beard has grown 
during his enchantment, and covering 
the table descends to the floor; and he 
sits thus waiting the moment that 
shall set him free. There he has been 
kept long centuries — there he must 
stay for ages. 

The Egyptians wore false beards, to 
distinguish them from women, though 
they shaved their faces clean. These 
were made of plaited hair, and had a 
peculiar form, according to the rank 
of the person by whom they were 
worn. 

The declaration of St. Paul that 
“long hair is a shame unto a man” 


has been made the pretext for many 
enactments of civil and ecclesiastical 
governments. As we have seen, the 
Gauls and Franks forbade slaves and 
merchants to wear the beard; and 
William the Conqueror rendered him¬ 
self odious in the eyes of the Saxons 
by ordering them to shave. In 1535 
Henry VIII. commanded all about his 
court to poll their heads, and to give 
example, he caused his own head to be 
polled, and from thenceforth his beard 
to be knotted and no more shaven. 
The Tartars waged a long and bloody 
war with the Persians, declaring them 
infidels because they would not cut 
their whiskers according to the fashion 
of Tartary. Much of the religion of 
the ancients lay in the management of 
their beards. 

Bearded women have existed at all 
periods. Herodotus has given us a 
fabulous account of the nation of 
Pedasnes above Halicarnassus, among 
whom the chin of the Priestess of 
Minerva regularly budded with a large 
beard whenever any great public 
calamity impended (Her. I., 75). A 
woman of Copenhagen, Bartel Garetji, 
had a beard reaching to her waist. 
Charles XII. of Sweden had a female 
grenadier in his army who possessed 
the beard no less than the courage of 
a man. Margaret, Duchess of Austria, 
and Governess of the Netherlands, had 
a large, wiry, stiff beard, on which she 
greatly prided herself. The recollec¬ 
tion of the bearded woman of Bar- 
num’s Museum is doubtless yet green 
in the memory of our readers. In the 
nursery of Albert, Duke of Bavaria, 
there is reported to have been a virgin 
with a very large black beard. Such 
instances are, however, very uncom¬ 
mon. 

Says Shakespeare: “ He that hath a 
heard is more than a vouth; and he 







184 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


that hath no beard is less than a man. 11 
The practice of clean shaving has 
been gradually adopted by civilized 
nations, and is now the prevailing cus¬ 
tom ; but it is troublesome, expensive 
and detracts from the manliness of a 
countenance. 


HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS. 

In European countries, Christmas 
has, for centuries, been one of the 
most noted of Christian “ holy days. 11 
By the command of Pope Telesphorus 
it is said to have been first observed, 
and as one of the moveable feasts, it 
was celebrated by some churches dur¬ 
ing the months of April and May. 
The present date for its observance 
was not fixed until the fourth century, 
when the theologians and scholars of 
the Romish Church decided upon the 
25th of December as the birthday of 
our Savior. The decision was based 
upon tradition and not upon well- 
authenticated history ; but it has been 
usually accepted as correct, and recog¬ 
nized as such by the church. 

In Roman Catholic countries and 
among the adherents of the Creek 
church, the day is ushered in with 
great rejoicings. Dancing, religious 
dramas, Christmas feasts and carols 
make it a cheerful festival. But in 
Germany it is the chief of holidays. 
There it is known as the “Children’s 
Festival, 11 and the entire day is devoted 
to the young. German parents first 
introduced the Christmas tree, with its 
gifts, and nowhere is this pleasant 
custom more thoroughly appreciated 
than among the people of that nation. 
A German Christmas tree, with its 
lighted tapers and heavily laden 
branches, is the token of merry mak¬ 
ings and delightful family rejoicings. 

In England, Christmas has- always 


been observed not only as a religious 
but also as a domestic festival. In 
palace and in cot, in city and in ham¬ 
let, from the Chevoit Hills to the Isle 
of Man, the whole kingdom rings with 
Christmas cheer. Many of the old 
customs, however, have been aban¬ 
doned. Tho Christmas scenes described 
by Irving are now rarely witnessed. 
Then the holiday season commenced 
with Christmas Eve and continued 
until Twelfth Night. Each mansion 
was decked with wreaths of holly, or 
with ivy and hawtliornc branches; 
and relatives, the tenantry and the 
stranger who claimed hospitality were 
entertained. The mistletoe was hung 
in the hall amid shouts of great re¬ 
joicing ; the table overflowed with 
tempting food, conspicuous among 
which was the Christmas dish of the 
Boar’s head. 

Around the hearth at night-fall 
when the huge yule log was lighted 
and the Wassail bowl filled to the 
brim, the guests gathered for the 
evening’s sports. With song and jests, 
games of snap dragon and apple-bob, 
weird stories and superstitions, legends 
of bj^-gone days and tho merry dance, 
the hours flew swiftly by. These fes¬ 
tivities often continued for several 
nights, but usually concluded with 
Twelfth Night. 

Since the settlement of this country, 
in the Middle, and especially the 
Southern States, Christmas has been 
a day of merry-making. Our Puritan 
fore-fathers did not look with much 
favor upon the institutions of the “ old 
country,” especially those that they 
thought were of Papal origin or had 
Romish tendencies. 

They were, therefore, from the first, 
stern opponents of Christmas festivi¬ 
ties. But this rigidity has gradually 
passed away, and New England now 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


185 


follows the example of her sister States 
in the recognition of the clay. 

But while it is pleasant to think 
that the clay is remembered with ioy 
and gladness, and that for many cen¬ 
turies it has proved the queen festival 
ot the year, it is more pleasing still to 
recall its origin, and to go back in 
fancy to the Christmas scene on the 
plains of Bethlehem; to the shep¬ 
herds watching their flocks by night, 
to the song of the angels, and the star 
that guided the Magi to the cradle 
of Him from whom all the blessings 
of Christianity come. This associa¬ 
tion should be the source of our joy, 
making us sing in our hearts as with 
our lips, “ Glory to God in the highest, 
And on earth peace and good will to 
men.'’ 


THE CHRISTMAS TREE. 


This is doubtless of German origin. 
Though in its present form it is com¬ 
paratively of recent date, yet its pagan 
prototype enjoyed a very high antiqui¬ 
ty. The early Germans conceived of 
the world as a great tree whose roots 
were hidden deep under the earth, but 
whose top, flourishing in the midst of 
Walhalla, the old German paradise, 
nourished the she-goat upon whose 
milk fallen heroes restored themselves. 
Yggdnafil was the name of this tree, 
and its memory was still green long 
after Christianity had been introduced 
into Germany, when much of its sym¬ 
bolic character was transferred to the 
Christmas tree. At first fitted up 
during the Twelve Nights in honor 
of Berchta, the goddess of spring, it 
was subsequently transferred to the 
birthday of Christ, who, as the God- 
man, is become the “ resurrection and 
the life.” The evergreen fir-tree, an 
emblem of spring-time, became the 


symbol of an eternal spring. The 
burning lights were to adumbrate Him 
who is the “light of the world,” and 
the gifts to remind us that God, in 
giving His only Son for the world’s 
redemption, conferred upon us the 
most priceless of all gifts. This sym¬ 
bolism extended also to the most usual 
of Christmas presents, apples and nuts; 
the former being considered as an em¬ 
blem of youth, the latter a profound 
symbol of spring, while the “ boy’s 
legs” relate to Saturn, who devoured 
his own children, and the kropfel to 
the thunder-stone of Thor. 


HISTORY OF LEATHER. 

Leather consists essentially ot the 
skins of animals chemically altered by 
the vegetable principle called tannin or 
tanic acid, so as to arrest that prone¬ 
ness to decomposition which is char¬ 
acteristic of soft animal substances. 
Its invention reaches beyond the dawn 
of history, and was probably among 
the earliest germs of civilization, for 
as the skins of animals would naturally 
be among the first articles of clothing, 
any means of preserving them more 
effectually than by drying would be 
highly prized. The discovery that 
bark had this effect was doubtless the 
result of accident. The principle of 
its action w^as unknown up to the 
present century, and the same unvary¬ 
ing method had been employed from 
the earliest times until the last few 
years, when the invention of new pro¬ 
cesses has much facilitated the manu¬ 
facture. 

The skins of all animals used in the 
production of leather consist chiefly 
of gelatine, a substance which easily 
enters into chemical combination with 
the tannic acid found in most kinds 
of trees, and forms what may be 











18G 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


termed an insolvable tanno-gelatin. 
This is the whole theory of tanning 
or converting the skins of animals 
into leather. Formerly oak bark was 
supposed to be the only tanning mate¬ 
rial of any value, but lately very nu¬ 
merous additions have been made to 
this branch of economic botany. In 
addition to the process of tanning in 
making leather, there are other modes, 
one of which is tarring, another dress¬ 
ing in oil. The term pelt is applied to 
all skins before they are converted 
into leather. When simply made into 
leather in the state we find in shoe- 
soles, it is called rough leather; but 
if, in addition, it is submitted to the 
process called currying, it is termed 
dressed leather. The skins which form 
the staple of our leather manufacture 
are the ox, cow, calf and kip, buffalo, 
horse, sheep, lamb, goat, kid, deer, dog, 
seal and hog. Besides the ox and cow 
hides furnished by the home-trade, 
vast numbers are imported from 
Monte-Video, South America, Russia 
and Northern Germany, and a very 
considerable number of dry buffalo 
hides are brought from the East Indies. 


HOW RUSSIA LEATHER IS MADE. 


The inimitable products of ripened 
manufactures in ancient seats can only 
be attained by other communities by 
first closely studying the principles 
and modes of operation, and then 
patiently practicing the art until the 
manual “mystery,” which is in all re¬ 
fined manufactures the greatest part, 
is mastered by the skill of generations 
of workmen. This is a difficult and 
not sudden success ; but it is at once 
one of the most honorable and dura¬ 
ble kind. Some nations have more 
genius and disposition than others for 
patient excelling. Perhaps if the ac¬ 


complishments of each nation could 
be closely examined with reference to 
the qualities as well as the circumstan¬ 
ces that favor them, a clear family like¬ 
ness might be traced between the 
parental character and its material 
offspring. What the Russians possess 
in their nature specially adapting them 
to the production of Russia leather 
and sheet iron, we shall not pause to 
inquire ; although the tanners of all 
Europe have done their best in vain to 
emulate the former product; but the 
communicable part of the process they 
pursue is stated as follows by one who 
has been there to investigate it. 

The best material for the red leather 
is goat skin, on account of its softness 
and smoothness ; but the largest beef 
hides and ram’s skins are also worked. 
The skins are first put into running 
water for one week, during which time 
they are taken out daily and thorough¬ 
ly beaten with a wooden brake, a work 
of skill and patience, which breaks up 
the “ nerve ” and softens the fibre to 
a pulpy condition. Next, they spend a 
month in a lye made of lime or ashes, 
of which the exact quality, as we have 
no chemical description, must be left 
to judgment and experiment. The 
hair is then removed, and the alkaline 
properties are got rid of by soaking 
the skins in an infusion of white gen¬ 
tian in fresh water for twenty-four 
hours. The swelling of the skins is 
now a matter of particular care, for 
which they are soaked four or five days 
in a mixture of oat meal and water. 
They are now ready for the tannm, 
which is extracted from the bark of 
the willow. (What special virtue 
there may be in the Russian vegetable 
products employed may possibly be 
worth an easy inquiry.) 

In the first solution, the skins re¬ 
main but three days, and are again 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION 


187 


beaten with the brake. The second 
solution, which is stronger than the 
first, retains them eight or ten days. 
They are then dried with the flesh 
side upward; again . beaten, then 
greased, dyed and finished ; using log¬ 
wood and alum for red, and alum and 
gi.en vitriol for the dark color. The 
mode of dying is peculiar. A number 
of skins are sewed up into the form of 
a sack, closed all around except a small 
opening at one end to admit the dyeing 
liquid. They are kept in motion in 
the dye until it has reached all parts, 
and then hung up to drain. The 
exclusion of light and air and slow 
draining in close contact may have 
some importance in practice. The 
skins are then dried, and again dyed 
with a sponge. The whole process 
is repeated two or three times. They 
are next greased again on the flesh, 
and grained with a notched stick pass¬ 
ing through the length and breadth 
of the skin until small furrows are 
gradually produced. After graining 
they are greased again, with birch or 
linseed oil, and put on the wooden horse 
to be smoothed. The birch oil con¬ 
tributes evidently to the undefinable 
characteristic odor by which Russia 
leather is distinguished. 


PATENT LEATHER. 

The “ patent leather,” so-called, used 
in manufacturing fine boots and shoes, 
for the skirting of saddles, for carriage 
tops and dash-boards, for fancy styles 
of harness, and many other uses, is 
made by methods quite distinct from 
ordinary tanning; and it embraces 
some twenty-five or thirty different 
varieties, including those colored red, 
blue, amber, bronze, and many other 
colors. 

The hides are generally tanned with 


hemlock, and require high liming and 
weak sour liquor to secure a soft grain, 
and are but lightly stuffed. They are 
then run through splitting machines 
to bring them to the desired thickness. 
Some of the heavier hides are passed 
through the machines as much as five 
or six times. The inner and outer— 
that is, the grain and flesh side splits 
— are commonly sold to the trunk- 
makers, and bring from twenty-five to 
upward of thirty cents per pound. 

The great essential in making supe¬ 
rior patent leather consists in properly 
applying the polishing substance, 
technically termed “ sweetmeat,” and 
which is composed for the most part 
of linseed oil. The hides, previously 
well dried, and softened by beating 
with pine blocks and what is known 
as “ boarding,” are stretched on frames 
provided for the purpose. The “ sweet¬ 
meat” is applied in successive coats, 
which are fixed by exposure to a high 
temperature, alternating with several 
applications of the material. In order 
to secure this, the frames are slid into 
properly constructed ovens, heated by 
steam pipes to 60 or 70 degrees, and are 
left there until the “ sweetmeat ” or 
varnish is set. Any roughness that 
may be found at any stage of the pro¬ 
cess is polished off with the pumice 
stone, the dust being very carefully 
removed by means of a wet brush, fol¬ 
lowed by a dry one. The entire opera¬ 
tion occupies from one to three weeks. 
That variety known as enameled leath¬ 
er requires additional manipulation, 
being passed through a graining ma¬ 
chine, in which a heavy brass roller 
with a slightly corrugated face is 
pressed forcibly upon the leather to 
perform a portion of the work of fin¬ 
ishing the article, the balance being 
done by a peculiar system of “board¬ 
ing” by hand.— American Artisan. 






188 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


RAILWAY SIGNAL CODE OF THE 
UNITE!) STATES. 


One whistle signifies “ down breaks.” 

Two whistles signify “ off breaks.” 

Three whistles signify “back up.” 

Continued whistles signify “danger.’ 

Rapid and short whistles, a “ cattle 
alarm.” 

A sweeping parting of the hands on 
a level of the eyes signifies “go ahead.” 

Downward motion of the hands 
with extended arms signifies “ stop.” 

Beckoning motion of one hand sig¬ 
nifies “ back.” 

Red flag waved upon the track 
signifies “ danger.” 

Red flag by the roadside signifies 
“danger ahead.” 

A red flag carried upon a locomotive 
signifies “ an engine following.” 

Red flag hoisted at a station is a 
signal to “stop.” 

Lantern at night raised and lowered 
vertically is a signal to “ start.” 

Lantern swung at right angles across 
the track means “ stop.” 

Lantern swung in a circles signifies 
“ back the train.” 


DIPPING THE HAND INTO MOLTEN 

IRON. 


The thing has been done over and 
over again, observed Dr. Carpenter in 
a recent lecture — that a man has gone 
and held his naked hand in such a 
stream of molten iron, and has done it 
without the least injury; all that is 
required being to have his hand moist, 
and if his hand is dry, he has merely 
to dip it in water, and he may hold his 
hand for a certain time in that stream 
of molten iron without receiving any 
injury whatever. This was exhibited 
publicly at a meeting of the British 
Association at Ipswich, many years 


ago. It is one of the miracles of 
science, so to speak ; they are perfectly 
credible to scientific men, because they 
know the principle upon which it hap¬ 
pens, and that principle is familiar to 
you all, that if you throw a drop of 
water upon hot iron, the water retains 
its spherical form, and does not spread 
upon it and wet it. Vapor is brought 
to that condition by intense heat, that 
it forms a sort of a film, or atmosphere, 
between the hand and the hot iron, 
and for a time that atmosphere is not 
too hot to be perfectly bearable. There 
are a number of these miracles of 
science, which we believe, however 
incredible at first sight they may ap¬ 
pear, because they can be brought to 
the test of experience, and can be at 
any time reproduced under the neces¬ 
sary conditions. Houdin, the conjurer, 
in his very interesting autobiography 
— a little book I would really recom¬ 
mend to any of you who are interested 
in the study of the workings of the 
mind — speaks of it, and tells how 
he tried this experiment, after a good 
deal of persuasion; and he says that 
the sensation of immersing his hand 
in this molten metal was like handling 
liquid velvet. 


THE PELISSE. 


A Pelisse, if accordant to its name, 
is a coat of prepared skins, on which 
the hair has been preserved — a fur coat. 
In this country it is an article of 
female dress, having sleeves, which 
distinguishes it from a cloak or mantle, 
and covering the whole body from the 
neck to the ankles. The French, from 
whom the term is imported, consider a 
lining, or at least trimmings, of fur as 
a necessary constituent in the dress; 
so much so, that they give the name of 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


189 


u la pelisse” to fur alone; but in this 
country pelisses are often made of 
woolen cloth, or of silk, even without 
trimmings. 

King John ordered a gray pelisson 
with nine bars of fur to be made for 
the queen. The ecclesiastical surplice 
is connected with this robe. Monks 
having to celebrate early services at all 
times of the year in cold churches were 
permitted to wear pellicce, coats of 
skins. A synod held in London in the 
year 1200 restricted the Black Monks 
and Nuns (Benedictines) to the use of 
lamb, cat and fox skins, with the view 
of preventing the spread of luxury in 
dress. These pelisses in time became 
worn and unsightly and were then 
covered with linen tunics during divine 

service. These were styled super-pellicoe, 
which by an easy transition became 

surplice. 


ANTHRACITE COAL. 


Anthracite coal was discovered in 
Pennsylvania soon after the settlement 
of the Wyoming Valley; but its first 
practical use was by Obadiah Gose, in 
his blacksmith shop, in the year 1768. 
In 1791, Philip Ginter discovered an¬ 
thracite on the Lehigh. In 1792, Rob¬ 
ert Morris, of Philadelphia, formed a 
company and purchased six thousand 
acres of the property on which Ginter 
discovered the coal. The company was 
called the “Lehigh Coal Mine. 1 ' This 
company opened the mine, and found 
the vein to be fifty feet thick, and of 
the very best quality of coal. The 
company made every effort to secure a 
demand for the coal, but without suc¬ 
cess; and having become thoroughly 
disgusted with their speculation, leased 
the six thousand acres of this mammoth 
coal-field to Messrs. White and Hazzard, 
of Philadelphia, for twenty years, at 
12 


an annual rental of one ear of corn. 
Messrs. White and Hazzard tried to 
use the coal in the blast furnace in 
1826, but failed—the furnaces chilled. 
In 1831, Neilson conceived the idea 
of a hot blast for saving fuel, and in 
1833, David Thomas adopted the idea 
of using the hot blast and anthracite 
together. White and Hazzard had, 
previous to this, formed a company 
and bought the property. In 1839, 
David Thomas made use of anthracite 
for making a pig metal a success, by 
which the twenty ears of corn were 
transformed into twenty millions of 
dollars. And this is the early history 
of the great Lehigh coal mines. 


BUBBLES. 

Blowing bubbles — what fun it is! 
Can anything be prettier than those 
fairy balloons, tinged with rainbow 
colors, as they float away in the sun¬ 
light ? And we shall have to confess 
that, big as we are, we never see a 
group of children with their pipes and 
their soapsuds without wanting to go 
and help them — without an aching to 
get the pipe into our own hands and 
to send some of those tiny globes soar¬ 
ing off into space on our own account. 
The only drawback to this sport is that 
the bubbles so soon break. But by 
using the following simple mixture, 
which any older sister can prepare for 
the little ones, it is said that they will 
last much longer than when made in 
the old way : 

Dissolve a quarter of an ounce of 
castile or oil soap, cut up in small 
pieces, in three-quarters of a pint of 
water, and boil for two or three min¬ 
utes ; then add five ounces of glycerine. 
When cold, this fluid will produce the 
best and most lasting bubbles that can 
be blown. 














190 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


JOHN MACADAM, THE 1NYENTOR OF 
MACADAMIZED ROADS. 


John Loudon Macadam was bom in 
1756, in Ayr county, Scotland, not far 
from the birth place of Robert Burns. 
His family was ancient and highly re¬ 
spectable. When he was little more 
than an infant, one of his uncles — 
William Macadam,—accompanied the 
British forces which came to America 
under Lord Loudon, during the old 
French war for the conquest of Can¬ 
ada. This uncle (William Macadam,) 
it appears, had something to do with 
supplying the British army with pro¬ 
visions ; and when the war was over, 
instead of returning to Europe, he 
settled in the city of New York, where 
he became a thriving merchant. When 
John Macadam was fourteen years of 
age, his father died, and the boy was 
sent to America to become a member 
of the family of his uncle William, 
who procured him a place in the 
counting-house of a friend. 

This was in 1770, when New York 
was a quaint old place, half English, 
half Dutch, situated at the end of 
Manhattan Island; the residue of 
which was verdant with woods and 
farms, and adorned with the villas and 
mansions of the wealthier citizens. 
People who are only acquainted with 
Manhattan Island now, when its beau¬ 
tiful groves are gone, its commanding 
bluffs dug away, its surface excavated 
and excoriorated for railroads and 
streets, can form no idea of its loveli¬ 
ness a hundred years ago, when John 
Macadam was a junior clerk. 

Five vears after his arrival in Amer- 
%/ 

ica, the revolutionary war broke out, 
and he was compelled to side for the 
king or the colonies. Being but nine¬ 
teen years of age at the time, and of 
Scottish birth, (there is a great deal 


of Tory blood in Scottish veins), he 
espoused the cause of George the 
Third, along with his uncle William 
and a large majority of the wealthier 
merchants of New York city. In 1776, 
when he was still but twenty years 
old, General Washington was com¬ 
pelled to abandon New York, which, 
for the next seven years, was in the 
hands of the British. After a time, 
this young man received the important 
appointment of prize agent for the 
port of New York, which gave him a 
percentage upon the prizes brought in 
by British privateers and men-of-war. 
His percentage was probably pretty 
liberal, for he is reported to have 
gained a considerable fortune from his 
office. 

Far indeed was it from the thoughts 
of the New York loyalists that the 
time would ever come when it would 
be beyond the power of their king to 
protect his faithful subjects in Man¬ 
hattan. And yet that time came. In 
1783, John Macadam, then twenty- 
seven years of age, with all the other 
Tories of note., was obliged to leave 
New l r ork, and abandon so much of 
their property as they could not carry 
off. 

On reaching his native Scotland, 
however, Macadam, was rich enough to 
buy an estate in the county of Ayr, 
and that estate was large enough to 
make him an important man in the 
county. It was while he held the 
office of Ayrshire road trustee that he 
began seriously to study the subject 
of road-making. At that time roads 
were universally bad, except where 
Nature herself had made them good. 

“A broad-wheeled wagon,” wrote 
Adam Smith, in 1774, “attended by 
two men, and drawn by eight horses, 
in about six weeks’ time, carries and 
brings back, between London and 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


191 


Edinburgh (404 miles), near four ton 
weight of goods.” 

Dr. Franklin, writing in 1751, speaks 
of traveling seventy miles a day in 
England, by a post-chaise, as a most 
extraordinary achievement—killing to 
man and beast. Much of the soil of 
England and Scotland is a deep, rich 
clay, which makes the best farms and 
the worst roads in the universe; and 
yet it is particularly well adapted to 
the system of Macadam. 

What it was which suggested to him 
the simple expedient of covering the 
soft miry roads with broken stones, 
averaging six ounces each in weight, 
has not been recorded. We only know, 
that, during the long wars between 
England and France, he held impor¬ 
tant appointments under the Crown, 
which made it his duty to superintend 
the transportation of supplies. 

He then renewed the study of roads, 
and pursued it with all the unflagging 
perseverance of a thorough Scotchman. 
At his own expense, he traveled thirty 
thousand miles for the observation of 
roads, which occupied him more than 
five years, and cost him more than five 
thousand pounds sterling. It is pre¬ 
sumed his idea was entirely original; 
for we cannot find any trace of a mac¬ 
adamized road previous to his day. 
The only notion which existed pre¬ 
vious to his time, of making a perma¬ 
nent road, was to pave the whole sur¬ 
face with pebbles, blocks, or slabs of 
stone; either of which was far too 
expensive to become general. 

It was not until 1811, when he was 
fifty-five years of age, that Macadam 
made his celebrated report to the 
House of Commons, in which he de¬ 
scribed the condition of the roads of 
Great Britain, and gave an outline of 
his system for repairing them. In 
1815, a district was assigned him for 


an experiment. Need we say that he 
met with nothing but opposition, not 
only from every one connected with 
the old road system, but even from the 
farmers through whose lands the first 
macadamized road was to be made ? 
Such was the prejudice against his plan 
that he could not get the old road- 
makers to execute his orders, and he 
was obliged to get his three sons to 
come and assist him in superintending 
the details. 

But the tide soon turned. A good 
macadamized road is an irresistible 
argument; and there soon arose a 
rage for making such roads, as furious 
as the former prejudice against them. 
Four years after he began operations, 
there were seven hundred miles of 
macadamized road in Great Britain ; 
and before the death of the inventor, 
out of the twenty-five thousand six 
hundred miles of high roads in En¬ 
gland, there were not more, it is said, 
than two hundred and fifty miles not 
macadamized. 

John Macadam was a strangely dis¬ 
interested man. He not only refused 
to receive any reward for his services, 
including an offered knighthood, but 
he would not take a contract to make 
or repair a road, and he declined some 
pressing and liberal offers to take 
charge of the roads in foreign coun¬ 
tries. 

He was twice married ; first, during 
his residence in New York, to a Long 
Island lady ; and again, in his seventy- 
first year, to another American lady. 
He died in 1836, aged eighty years. 


Maps, globes and dials were first 
invented by Anaximander in the sixth 
century before the Christian era. The}' 
were first brought into England by 
Bartholomew Columbus, in the year 
1489. 







192 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


SUCTION. 


Suction is a common term applied 
to the force of the atmosphere, and is 
simply weight or gravitation. Air, 
however, unlike some more solid sub¬ 
stances, acts equally in ever} 7 direction, 
up or down having no influence on its 
action. By the way, u up ” and “ down ” 
are simply relative terms, having no 
absolute signification, but meaning 
simply toward or from the surface, or 
rather the center of the earth. The 
atmosphere which surrounds the earth 
exerts a pressure on it and every object 
upon it of about fifteen pounds to 
every square inch exposed to its ac¬ 
tion. 

Now, if the air can be kept from 
acting on the under surfaces of bodies 
they would adhere to whatever surface 
they were placed upon and would stick 
or “suck,'” so that the object, if not 
too heavy could be lifted. Boys fre¬ 
quently cut out disks or circular pieces 
of leather and put a string through 
their centers by which to lift them. 
The leather being moistened with 
water can be pressed upon a smooth 
surface, and the edges adhering air¬ 
tight prevents the atmosphere from 
acting on the under surfaces. By this 
devise we have seen a common bucket, 
full of water, lifted with a “sucker” 
of only about four inches in diameter. 
It was done by the pressure of the 
atmosphere on the upper surface of 
the disk, amounting in the aggregate to 
over one hundred and ninety pounds, 
as the area of a disk four inches diam¬ 
eter is over twelve and a half inches, 
each sustaining the pressure of fifteen 
pounds. 

So the water in the pump barrel is 
elevated by the pressure of the atmos¬ 
phere on the surface of that on the 
outside of the pump. The upward 


movement of the plunger containing 
an upward lifting valve, draws or lifts 
the air out of the barrel between the 
plunger and the fixed valve near the 
bottom of the barrel. This creates a 
vacuum more or less perfect, and the 
pressure of the atmosphere on the 
outside of the barrel forces the liquid up 
through the fixed valve into the pump 
barrel. 

The sucking of cider through a 
straw, which every boy who lives in 
the country has often done, is another 
exemplification of this same property 
in the atmosphere. The boy inserts 
one end of the straw into the cider, 
and with his lungs draws out the air, 
when the atmosphere at once lifts the 
cider up through the tube. If the 
straw was secured air-tight in the bar¬ 
rel, and no atmosphere admitted, or if 
the pump well was so covered in that 
no air could have access to the water, 
“suction” would be merely a name 
without any reality. 


IMPROVED MUCILAGE. 


Ordinary mucilage made from gum 
Arabic, does not fix paper to wood 
or pasteboard, or to metallic surfaces. 
These disadvantages are overcome by 
adding a solution of sulphate of alum¬ 
inum, made up in ten times its 
quantity of water. Ten grains of 
aluminum sulphate are sufficient for 
250 grains of mucilage. Prepared in 
this way it will not become mouldy. 
Again, according to Hirchburg, a few 
drops of strong sulphuric acid are 
added to the gum solution, and the 
precipitated sulphate of lime allowed 
to settle. Solutions prepared in this 
way a year and a half ago have neither 
become mouldy nor lost their adhesive 
power. 












THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


193 


BRONZE FOR PRINTING IN GOLD. 


Gold dust, for printing in gold, 
known under the name of bronze, 
comes mostly from Fuerth, in Bavaria. 
Fine cuttings of the metal are mixed 
with a sticky liquid and then ground 
like paints. Thus reduced to a pow¬ 
dered form, the sticky matter is sep¬ 
arated from the metallic dust by 
washing in water, after which it is 
sifted into the various sorts. It is 
obtained in as many as fifteen grades 
of fineness and in the different colors 
— white, (made from silver leaf), pale 
yellow, orange, green and red. In 
printing in gold, the impressions are 
first struck off in printers’ gold size. 
The gold or bronze dust is then ap¬ 
plied by means of a cotton tuft or brush 
of short fur. If it is desirable to have 
very rich gilding, bronzes of various 
colors may be used. Care must be 
taken that the paper which is used for 
the bronzing process be perfectly dry. 


WHEN THE OIL SPRINGS WERE 
FIRST DISCOVERED. 

A full century ago the existence of 
oil springs in Western Pennsylvania 
was a published and well-established 
fact. In the Massachusetts Magazine, 
published in 1789, we find the follow¬ 
ing in relation to them: “ In the 
northern part of Pennsylvania there 
is a creek called Oil Creek, which emp¬ 
ties into the Alleghany river. It issues 
from a spring on the top of which 
floats an oil similar to that called Bar- 
badoes tar, and from which one may 
gather several gallons a day. The 
troops sent to guard the Western posts 
halted at this spring, collected some 
of the oil and bathed their joints with 
it. This gave them great relief from 
the rheumatism, witn which they were 


afflicted. The water, of which the 
troops drank freely, operated as a 
gentle purge. 

“ There is still earlier evidence of 
the existence of the oil springs than 
this. It is found in an old book pub¬ 
lished in 1772, entitled ‘Travels in 
North America,’ by Peter Kalm. On 
a map in this volume, the exact loca¬ 
tion of the oil springs is given.” 

We take this from an exchange ; but 
this is still far behind. As early as 
1629, almost a century and a half be¬ 
fore Kalm’s hook appeared, a Francis¬ 
can missionary, Joseph de la Roche 
d’Allion, who crossed the Niagara 
river into what is now New York 
State, wrote a letter in which he men¬ 
tions the oil springs, and gives the 
Indian name of the place, which he 
explained to mean, u There is plenty 
there.” His letter was printed in Sa- 
gard’s u Histoire du Canada,” in 1632, 
and subsequently in LeClercq. 


THE WOODPECKER’S FORESIGHT. 

The woodpecker in California is a 
storer of acorns. The tree he selects 
is invariably of the pine tribe. He 
bores several holes, differing slightly in 
size, at the fall of the year, and then 
flies away, in many instances to a long 
distance, and returns with an acorn, 
which he immediately sets about ad¬ 
justing to one of the holes prepared 
for its reception, which will hold it 
tightly in its position. But he does 
not eat the acorn, for as a rule, he is 
not a vegetarian. His object in stor¬ 
ing away the acorn exhibits foresight, 
and knowledge of results more akin to 
reason than to instinct. The succeed¬ 
ing winter the acorn remains intact, 
hut becoming saturated is predisposed 
to decay, when it is attacked by mag¬ 
gots who seem to delight in this special 













194 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


food. It is then that the woodpecker 
reaps the harvest his wisdom has provi¬ 
ded, at a time when, the ground being 
covered with snow, he would experience 
a difficulty, otherwise, in obtaining suit¬ 
able or palatable food. It is a subject 
of speculation why the redwood cedar 
or the sugar pine is invariably selected. 
It is not probable that the insect, the 
most dainty to the woodpecker's taste, 
frequents only the outside of two trees; 
but true it is, that in Calaveras, Mari¬ 
posa, and other districts of California, 
trees of this kind may be frequently 
seen covered all over their trunks with 
acorn, when there is not an oak tree 
within several miles. 


TIME, SPACE AND POWER. 

Persons who have not studied the 
principles of mechanics, often deceive 
themselves with regard to the power of 
levers and wheels; and many men of 
an ingenious turn of mind have spent 
time, money and labor, in designing 
and constructing machines to gain 
power by levers, wheels and pulleys. 
No power can be gained by any 
arrangement of such devices. The 
power of any machine is the force 
which sets and keeps it in motion ; the 
levers, wheels and pulleys are only 
mechanical devices for transmitting 
the power to some other point, wheth¬ 
er it be for the hoisting of barrels or 
boxes, by block and tackle, the turn¬ 
ing of a locomotive wheel, or the pad¬ 
dles of a steamship. By the use of a 
lever a man can raise a greater weight 
chan he can by hand, but he could 
raise this weight in the same time, by 
hand, if it were divided into two or 
more parcels. This is an immutable 
law of mechanics. No man who 
understands it will ever engage in the 
rutile search for a perpetual motion. 


WHAT A DEED OF A FARM INCLUDES. 

The following is from an address of 
Hon. Edmund H. Bennet, delivered be¬ 
fore the Massachusetts State Board of 
Agriculture: 

Of course everyone knows it conveys 
all the fences standing on the farm, 
but all might not think it also included 
the fencing stuff, posts, rails, etc., which 
had once been used in the fence, but 
had been taken down and piled up for 
future use again in the same place. 
But new fencing material just bought 
and never attached to the soil would 
not pass. So piles of hoop-poles, 
stowed away, if once used on the land 
have been considered a part of it; but 
loose boards or scaffold poles laid loose¬ 
ly across the beams of the bam and 
never fastened to it would not be, and 
the seller of the farm might take them 
away. Standing trees, of course, also 
pass as part of the land; so do trees 
blown or cut down and still left in the 
woods where they fell, but not if cut 
and corded up for sale; the wood has 
then become personal property. 

If there be any manure in the barn¬ 
yard, or in a compost heap on the field, 
read}' for immediate use, the buyer 
ordinarily takes that, also, as belong¬ 
ing to the farm; though it might not 
be so if the owner had previously sold 
it to some other party, and had collect¬ 
ed it together in a heap by itself. 
Growing crops also pass by the deed of 
a farm, unless they are expressly re¬ 
served, and when it is not intended to 
convey these it should be so stated in 
the deed itself; a mere oral agreement 
to that effect would not be valid in law. 
Another mode is to stipulate that pos¬ 
session is not to be given until some 
future day, in which case the crops or 
manure may be removed before that 
time. 











105 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


As to the buildings on tlie farm, 
though generally mentioned in the 
deed, it is not absolutely necessary they 
should be. A deed of land ordinarily 
carries all the buildings on it belong- 
ing to the grantor, whether mentioned 
or not; and this rule includes the lum¬ 
ber and timber of any old building 
which has been taken down or blown 
down and been packed away for future 
use on the farm. 

But if there be any buildings on the 
farm built by some third person, with 
the farmer’s leave, the deed would not 
convey these, since such buildings are 
personal property, and do not belong 
to the landowner to convey. The real 
owner thereof might move them off, al¬ 
though the purchaser of the farm sup¬ 
posed he was buying and paying for 
all the buildings on it. His only rem¬ 
edy in such case would be against the 
party selling the premises. As part of 
the buildings conveyed, of course the 
window-blinds are included, even if 
they be at the time taken off and car¬ 
ried to a painter’s shop to be painted. 

It would be otherwise if they had 
been newly purchased and brought into 
the house but not yet attached or fitted 
to it. Lightning rods also go with the 
house, if a farmer is foolish enough to 
have any on his house. A furnace in 
the cellar, brick or portable, is consid¬ 
ered a part of the house, but an ordi¬ 
nary stove with a loose pipe running 
into the chimney is not, while a range 
set in brick work is. Mantel-pieces so 
attached to the chimney as not to be 
removed without marring the plaster¬ 
ing go with the house, but if merely 
resting on brackets they may be taken 
away by the former owner without le¬ 
gal liability. The pumps, sinks, etc., 
fastened to the buildings are a part of 
it in law, and so are the water-pipes 
connected therewith bringing water 


from a distant spring. If the farmer 
has iron kettles set in brickwork near 
his barn for cooking food for his stock, 
or other similar uses, the deed of his 
farm covers them also, as likewise a 
bell attached to his barn to call his men 
to dinner. If he indulges in ornament¬ 
al statues, vases, etc., resting on the 
ground by their own weight merely, 
and sells his estate without reservation, 
these things go with the land. 


GLYCERINE. 

A viscid colorless liquid having a 
sweetish taste but no odor which may 
be derived from nearly all oily or fatty 
substances. It was discovered by 
Scheele in 1779. It unites readily with 
water and the combination thus formed 
as well as the pure glycerine is capable 
of solving a great variety of substances. 
It is obtained by various processes the 
object being to detach it from its com¬ 
bination with the acids oleic margaric 
and stearic to which it is united as a 
base. The refuse of soap making con¬ 
tains a large proportion of it which 
has usually been thrown away. It 
will not freeze even at very low tempe¬ 
ratures. At ordinary temperatures it 
is probably one of the least volatile 
liquids known. Its soothing and heal¬ 
ing properties render it a valuable re¬ 
medy for the diseases of the skin, re¬ 
sulting in chapped hands, sore nose, 
salt rheum, and many other similar 
affections. It is often so impure that 
it acts as an irritant rather than as a 
healing agent. To test its purity it 
should be agitated with sulphuric acid. 
If pure, its color will change to a light 
brown, with scarcely any evolution of 
gas. If impure, large quantities of gas 
will be given off 1 , which ceases upon 
stopping the agitation, and is again 
renewed upon a renewal of the shaking. 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


190 

THE SEWING MACHINE —ITS ORIGIN. 


In the year 1825, there lived in the 
city of Saint Etienne, in France, a 
poor and obscure tailor whose patrons 
were few and far between. His care¬ 
lessness about the work intrusted to 
him, joined to his eccentric habits, 
obtained for him throughout the 
neighborhood an unenviable reputa¬ 
tion, the natural consequences of 
which were that his business declined 
from day to day and he ended by be¬ 
coming a veritable pauper. In 1827, 
he was considered as laboring under the 
constant influence of hallucinations, 
and in 1829, he was universally regard¬ 
ed by the gossips of his precinct as 
insane. 

This madman was no other than 
Barthlemy Thimmonier, the inventor 
of the first sewing machine. He was 
born at Abreste in the year 1793, and 
was the son of a dyer of Lyons. 

It is an old custom with many man¬ 
ufacturers of the south of France, to 
give out large quantities of needle-work 
and embroidery to the country girls 
residing around their establishments. 
This attracted the notice of Thimmon- 
nier and originated in his mind the 
first idea of a sewing machine. On its 
construction he worked without any 
help or money during four successive 
years, at the expiration of which, in 
1830, he obtained his letters patent. 

A government engineer by the name 
of Beaunnier, living at Saint Etienne 
at the time, examined the machine, 
and appreciating at a glance the value 
of the invention, took the tailor with 
him to Paris, where a firm was soon 
started under the title of “Ferrand, 
Thimmonnier, Germain, Petit & Co.,” 
with a view to the profitable working 
of the patent. 

In 1841, in the Rue de Sevres, might 


have been seen a workshop, in which 
eighty wooden sewing machines were 
constantly employed in making army 
clothing. 

That same year, however, the tide of 
a fierce revolutionary outbreak swept 
over France, and the laboring men of 
the capital, in their blind and ignorant 
fury, saw in this new substitution of 
machinery for manual labor, nothing 
but a means of robbing their wives 
and daughters of their daily bread. 
The consequence was exactly the same 
as in the case of the canal boatmen of 
Munden, who destroyed the first steam¬ 
boat started there in the year 1707, 
and of the Belgian weavers, who some 
years ago broke up the first flax-spin¬ 
ning machinery imported from En¬ 
gland into the city of Ghent. An 
armed and infuriated mob smashed all 
of Thimmonnier s machines, and he 
himself had to flee for his life. 

Soon after this, Baunier died, and 
the firm of Germain, Petit & Co. was 
dissolved, leaving our poor tailor out 
in the cold. 

In the year 1834, Thimmonier re¬ 
turned to Paris, and having improved 
his machine, attempted to make a 
living by taking in sewing. In this, 
however, he failed, and was at length 
obliged to walk all the way back to his 
native home with his machine upon 
his back, exhibiting it as a curiosity 
along the road, in order to enable him 
to purchase his daily meals. 

After this sad experience, it would 
be thought Thimmonnier would have 
given up the matter in despair, but, on 
the contrary, he went to work and con¬ 
structed several new machines, which 
he disposed of with great difficulty. 

In the year 1845, the date of Howe’s 
patent in America, the French ma¬ 
chine was already making two hundred 
stitches a minute. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


197 


M. Magnin, of Villefranca, at this 
crisis joined our inventor, and, furnish¬ 
ing the necessary funds, the construc¬ 
tion of ten-dollar machines was at 
once begun by them, with a fair pros¬ 
pect of pecuniary reward. In 1848, 
these machines made three hundred 
stitches per minute, and could sew and 
embroider any material, from muslin 
to leather inclusive. The wood-work 
had now also been replaced by metal. 

In the memorable month of Febru¬ 
ary, 1848, another convulsion of the 
people took place in France, and for 
the second and last time were Thim- 
monnier’s hopes of success entirely 
blighted, both himself and his partner 
being completely ruined by it. 

He sold his English patent to a 
Manchester company for a trifle, sent 
his best machine, in 1851, to the great 
London Exhibition, but too late to be 
noticed ; and, finally, after thirty years 
of a life of incessant struggle and 
adversity, he died, at the age of 64, in 
the greatest poverty, on the 5th day 
of August, 1857, at a place called Am- 
plepuis. 

While our poor tailor was starving 
in Europe, the sewing machine was 
being perfected on a new principle, in 
the United States, and in 1845, Elias 
Howe, Jr., obtained his patent, out of 
which he eventually made quite a large 
sum of money. 


HOW TO MAKE A NOON-MARK. 

Persons who live where there is no 
standard time, can easily keep a clock 
right by a noon-mark. When the 
shadow falls on the mark set the clock 
slow or fast, according to our table of 
clock slow or fast, for that day. There 
are four days in the year when sun and 
clock are exactly together at noon; 
these days are, April 15th, June 15th, 


September 1st and December 24th. A 
correct noon-mark may be made on 
either of these days by a watch that is 
known to be right by some standard 
time ; on other days of the year by 
using our table of clock slow or fast. 

Thus, on January first make the 
mark at the edge of the shadow when 
the time is four minutes past twelve 
by the correct watch. If you cannot 
readily get the correct time, you may 
make a noon-mark any clear night, as 
follows: Hang up two plumb-lines 
out of doors in such a position that on 
sighting from one to the other the 
North Star will be exactly in range j 
then drive down two stakes exactly in 
place of the two lines ; the shadow ai 
noon from one to the other will be 
near enough north and south to make 
a very accurate noon-mark. This 
mark can be made by a compass, if the 
magnetic variation is allowed for by an 
experienced engineer. 


FIRST PIECE OF AMERICAN SILK. 

A short time before the year 1800, 
Walter Allen, living in Union Village, 
R. I., (which is now North Smithfield,) 
was married to Miss Lucy Buffum, 
daughter of William Buffum, who 
lived near Slatersville. The bride wore 
on the occasion a silk dress entirely of 
her own make. She tended the silk 
worms, reeled the silk from the cocoons, 
spun it, colored it, wove it, and made 
the dress. It was a beautiful heavy- 
ribbed, dark brown silk, pieces of which 
are now carefully treasured by mem¬ 
bers of the family. It would be called 
in these days an excellent piece of silk. 
A lady of Providence, ninety years old, 
remembers the fact, and says that it 
was stated at the time that this was 
the first piece of silk manufactured in 
this country. 









198 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


CEMENT FOR METAL AND GLASS. 

To cement metal to glass, mix two 
parts of powdered white litharge and 
one part of dry white lead into a 
dough with boiled linseed oil and lac 
copal. Coat the metal with this 
cement, and gently press the glass into 
it. Litharge when mixed with glycer¬ 
ine makes a very strong cement provid¬ 
ed the glycerine be pure and free from 
water. This latter mixture has been 
recommended for making glass stop¬ 
pers tight in bottles, hut it was dis¬ 
covered that when they were put in 
with it they utterly refused to come 
out, the mixture forming a very good 
cement. Its uses are very wide. 


THE UNCERTAINTY OF INVENTION 
HONORS. 

Some of the most valuable inven¬ 
tions have descended to us without the 
names of the authors having been pre¬ 
served. We are the inheritors of an 
immense legacy of the results of labor 
and ingenuity, but we know not the 
names of our benefactors. Who in- 
vented the watch as a measurer of 
time ? Who invented the fast and 
loose pulley ? Who invented the ec¬ 
centric ? Who, asks a mechanical 
inquirer, invented the method of cut¬ 
ting screws with stocks and dies ? 
Whoever he might be, he was cer¬ 
tainly a great benefactor to his species. 
Yet (adds the writer) his name is not 
known, though the invention has been 
so recent. This is not, however, the 
case with most modern inventions, the 
greater number of which are more or 
less disputed. Who was entitled to 
the merit of inventing printing has 
never yet been determined. Weber 
and Senefelder both laid claim to the 
invention of lithography, though it 
was merely an old German art revived. 


Even the invention of the penny post¬ 
age system by Sir Rowland 1*111 is 
disputed; Dr. Gray, of the British 
Museum, claiming to be its inventor, 
and a French writer alleging it to be 
an old French invention. The inven¬ 
tion of the steamboat has been claimed 
on behalf of Blasco de Garay, a Span¬ 
iard; Papin, a Frenchman; Jonathan 
Hull, an Englishman; and Patrick 
Miller, of Dalswinton, a Scotchman. 
The invention of the spinning ma¬ 
chine has been variously attributed to 
Paul, Wyatt, Hargreaves, Higley and 
Arkwright. The invention of the bal¬ 
ance spring was claimed by Huyghens, 
a Dutchman ; Hautefeuille, a French¬ 
man ; and Hooke, an Englishman. 
There is scarcely a point of detail in 
the locomotive but is the subject of 
dispute. Thus, the invention of the 
blast pipe is claimed for Trevithick, 
George Stephenson, Goldsworthy Gur¬ 
ney, and Timothy Hackwarth; that 
of the tubular boiler by Seguin, Stev¬ 
ens, Booth, and W. H. James; that 
of the link motion by John Gray, 
Hugh Williams and Robert Stephen¬ 
son. 

Indeed, many inventions appear to 
be coincident. A number of minds 
are working at the same time in the 
same track with the object of supply¬ 
ing some want generally felt; and 
guided by the same experience, they 
not unfrequently arrive at like results. 
It has sometimes happened that the 
inventors have been separated at great 
distances, so that piracy on the part 
of either was impossible. Thus Had¬ 
ley and Godfrey almost simultaneously 
invented the quadrant, the one in Lon¬ 
don, the other in Phi i..Jelphia; and 
the process of electrotyping was in¬ 
vented at the same time by Mr. 
Spencer, a working chemist at Liver¬ 
pool, and by Professor Jacobi, at St. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


199 


Petersburg. The safety lamp was a 
coincident invention, made about the 
same time by Sir Humphrey Davy and 
George Stephenson; and perhaps a 
more remarkable instance of a coinci¬ 
dent discovery was that of the planet 
Neptune, by Leverrier, at Paris, and 
by Adams, at Cambridge. 


PEOPLE OF THE WORLD IN SMALL 

SPACE. 


Few are aware of the vast number of 
people that can be placed in a small 
space. When we speak of millions of 
men, we are apt to picture to ourselves 
an almost boundless mass of humanity ; 
yet a million of people standing to¬ 
gether, each person occupying four 
square feet, could be placed on a patch 
but little more than a mile square. A 
square mile will accommodate 7,965,000. 
The whole population of the United 
States would hardly cover two and a 
half miles square, and the population 
of the entire world could easily be 
accommodated on a tract twelve miles 
wide — less in extent that some town¬ 
ships. 


THE NUMBER OF EGGS FROM A HEN. 

A German naturalist answers the 
question how many eggs a hen can 
possibly lay, as follows: The ovary of 
a hen contains about six hundred em¬ 
bryo eggs, of which, in the first year, 
not more than twenty are matured. 
The second year produces one hundred 
and twenty, the third one hundred and 
thirty-five; the fourth, one hundred 
and fourteen, and in the following four 
years the number decreases by twenty 
yearly. In the ninth year only ten 
eggs can be expected, and thus it ap¬ 
pears that after the first four years 
hens cease to be profitable as layers. 


DISTILLATION OF PERFUMES. 


The invention of this process is as¬ 
cribed to Avicena, an Arabian doctor, 
who flourished in the tenth century. 
Previous to his time, resins, spices, and 
oils or ointments, scented by contact 
with fragrant substances, were the 
chief, if not the only, forms of perfume 
known. To him, it is said belongs the 
honor of first separating the aromas 
of plants and flowers in such a manner 
that they could be readily applied 
where greasy unguents and smoking 
incense were alike unavailable. 

To the invention of Avicena we are 
indebted for the most durable elements 
of modern perfumery ; but our most 
fragrant and delicate odors are pro¬ 
duced by another process, of much 
later discovery, which we will attempt 
to describe in the paragraphs that 
follow. 

The odors of all vegetable matters 
reside in a principle or constituent 
known as essential oil, or more proper¬ 
ly, otto. Each individual plant or 
flower contains a greater or less amount 
of this principle, the separation of 
which from the parent substance is the 
initial movement in all the most im¬ 
portant of the perfumer’s operations. 
As it exists in but small proportions, 
we have in it when isolated a remarka¬ 
ble concentration of odor, and its sta¬ 
bility when so separated is so great 
that many varieties can be kept for 
years unchanged. In the otto we not 
only possess the fragrance of the 
flower long after the season of bloom¬ 
ing is past, but by its use can impart 
a favorite odor to a thousand bodies 
scentless in themselves. 

Ottos are all in the liquid form, are 
of an oily appearance, vary in color 
from light straw to dark red or brown, 
and possess, as before stated, the odor 










200 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


of the substances from which they are 
derived. The yield of this principle 
from various materials ranges from six 
per cent, or more down to very minute 
quantities. Nutmegs, for instance, are 
very rich in otto; lemon rinds con¬ 
tain it in such abundance that it can be 
profitably extracted by expression; 
while roses yield so little that but three 
teaspoonfuls are obtained from a hun¬ 
dred pounds of the petals. 

Tho well-known process of distilla¬ 
tion is the method most frequently 
employed to procure these ottos. The 
process, as almost every one knows, 
consists essentially in vaporizing a 
liquid in a closed vessel, and conduct¬ 
ing the vapor to a receiver, in which it 
is condensed by the application ot cold 
water. When a given plant or flower 
is placed in the still with a proper pro¬ 
portion of water, and heat applied, its 
otto, being volatile, rises with the 
steam, and both being condensed to¬ 
gether, they readily separate on cool¬ 
ing. When applied to this purpose 
the process is often conducted by pass¬ 
ing steam through the material to be 
exhausted instead of boiling it in the 
usual way. 


THE MANUFACTURE OF TYPE. 

The processes connected with the 
manufacture of the u leaden messen¬ 
gers of thought ” are unknown to the 
vast majority of the community, even 
among printers. A visit to the Chi¬ 
cago Type Foundry furnishes us with 
the necessary data for a brief descrip¬ 
tion of the modus operandi of their 
fashioning. 

The first process is that of cutting 
the letter in fine steel, forming the 
punch. This punch is driven into a 
piece of polished copper about one- 
half inch square by If inches long, 


which, in turn, is sent to the fitter to 
be finished and fitted as the matrix , 
which is only the mould for the face 
of the letter. The mould proper is for 
the body upon which the letter stands, 
and is made of hardened steel. The 
matrix and the mould are then placed 
in the casting machines — curious and 
compact specimens of mechanical skill 
— when a tiny pump forces the molten 
metal into them, forming the type. 
In small fonts, where frequent changes 
are made in the moulds, the machines 
are driven by hand power; but when 
the fonts are large, as for daily news¬ 
papers, steam is used as a motor, and 
the industrious little machines, with 
scarcely less than human intelligence, 
go thumping along at their work, 
requiring but little care or attention, 
except when changes in the letter and 
moulds become necessary. 

Type metal is a composition of lead, 
tin, antimony and copper, all of which 
metals are required to give the neces¬ 
sary ductility, hardness and toughness. 

Each letter, as it leaves the machine, 
has attached to its bottom a wedge- 
shaped jet, somewhat similar to that 
of a bullet cast in a hand-mould. The 
loose types are placed upon a table, 
where a boy rapidly picks them up, at 
the same time breaking off the jets. 
This still leaves a bur at the shoulder 
of the type, which is taken off by 
rubbers , girls seated at a table on 
which there are placed steel files made 
expressly for this purpose. The let¬ 
ters then pass to the setters , who set 
them in long lines in wooden sticks, 
each sort or kind by itself. They then 
go to the kerning machine, where such 
letters as f, j and Italics, which have a 
part of the face jutting over the body, 
are dressed on the side, on a rotary 
cutter, which dresses it without de¬ 
stroying the kern. The types then go 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


201 


to the dresser , who, with a sharp plane, 
grooves the bottom to take off the bur 
remaining from the breaking, and 
with a square steel rod dresses the 
upper and under sides, giving the pol¬ 
ished, silvery appearance so familiar in 
unused type. 

Then follows the process of picking 
— that is, the examination of each 
individual letter, by the aid of a mag¬ 
nifying glass, that no defective letter 
may be sent out. The types are then 
made up in shorter lines, and the lines 
into pages, put in paper wrappers, and 
sent to the dividing room, where they 
are divided into fonts, each font having 
its due proportion of the various sorts. 
They are then sent to the office, 
packed, marked and shipped to the 
printer. This is the way the type on 
which this book is printed was made ; 
and after it was set up in pages of the 
size before you by the printer, it was 
sent to the electrotyper, who made the 
plates, as described in another article 
in this book. 


GREAT STONES. 

Some of the blocks of granite used 
in the construction of the Treasury 
building at Washington are the largest 
ever moved in this country, and they 
were carried from the eastern part of 
Maine. They were transported to 
Washington by water, and after their 
arrival there moved by ox-power upon 
a sort of double pulley system, a dis¬ 
tance of two miles to the spot where 
they were wanted for use. The work 
of moving them was performed with 
comparative ease, not more than 
eight or ten yoke of oxen being 
employed to move a block weigh¬ 
ing more than seventy tons. The 
fluted pillars, great numbers of which 
are used in the building, are forty feet 


long, and weigh fifty tons at least. 
The largest blocks, thirty to forty feet 
square, and three feet thick, weighed 
upward of seventy tons. The facility 
with which these large blocks were 
moved and fixed in their places was a 
source of wondermeiit, and seemed to 
admiring spectators to. be the perfec¬ 
tion of mechanical skill and ingenuity. 
And yet how insignificant the achieve¬ 
ment when compared with the tri¬ 
umphs of ancient art. In the founda¬ 
tion of the great Temple of the Sun at 
Baalbec may still be seen, even in the 
second course, stones which are thirty- 
seven feet long and nine feet thick; 
and under these, and about twenty feet 
from the ground, three stones which 
alone occupy one hundred and eighty- 
two feet in length by twelve feet high. 
These three stones are estimated to 
weigh nine hundred tons each ! But 
we read of an Egyptian idol-temple, 
Buris, far surpassing this, in which 
there was a sanctuary composed of a 
single block of granite sixty feet square. 
This is the largest and heaviest stone 
mentioned in the history of nations. 


LONG AND SHORT DAYS. 

At Berlin and London, the longest 
day has sixteen hours and a half; at 
Stockholm, the longest day has eight¬ 
een hours and a half; at Hamburg, 
the longest day has seventeen hours 
and the shortest seven; at St. Peters¬ 
burg, the longest day has nineteen and 
the shortest five hours; at Tornea, 
Finland, the longest day has twenty- 
one hours and a half, and the shortest 
two hours and a half; at Wanderhus, 
Norway, the day lasts from the 21st 
of May to the 22d of July, without 
interruption; and at Spitzbergen, the 
longest day has three months and a 
half. 










202 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


USEFUL COMPOUND. 

A composition has been patented in 
London for manufacturing molded ar¬ 
ticles from a mixture of the asphaltum 
of tar and fine brick dust. This 
asphaltum is the residue left in the 
retorts in distilling gas tar to obtain 
naptha ; it is kneaded with one part of 
brick dust, and then molded into the 
desired form for picture frames, or any 
other article desired. From such cheap 
materials it is thought that a compo¬ 
sition may be made which can be vul¬ 
canized, and from which articles like 
canes and combs, may be manufact¬ 
ured. In Paris a compound of albu¬ 
men and sawdust is proposed for the 
manufacture of various molded articles. 
Pure albumen, obtained either from 
eggs or blood, is slightly diluted with 
water, and in this fine sawdust is 
soaked; it is then submitted to severe 
pressure in a press, after which it is 
forced into metal molds, which should 
be kept heated during the process of 
fabrication. As soon as the molding is 
completed, the mold is plunged in cold 
water to cool the articles. 


ALMANACS. 

Almanacs are generally supposed to 
have originated with the Arabs, as the 
term is composed of two Arabic words 
signifying “Diaries.” The supersti¬ 
tious beliefs to which the habits of life 
of this people inclined them, the wild 
and desolate localities in which their 
temporary habitations were fixed, as 
well as their monotonous existence, 
rendered them peculiarly liable to be 
impressed by the mysterious practices 
of star-gazers and soothsayers. Such 
was their fanatical reliance upon the 
influence which the movements of the 
various heavenly bodies were supposed 


to exert, that not only important ex¬ 
peditions, but even ordinary domestic 
duties, were determined by the divina¬ 
tions of the astrologer. It was but 
natural, then, that treatises descriptive 
of the various changes of the heavenly 
bodies, and speculations and prophecies 
with them, should constitute the earli¬ 
est species of literature among such a 
people. Accordingly, historians inform 
us that scarcely an Arabian or Moham¬ 
medan famil} 7 could be found, in which 
the almanac was not among their most 
valued possessions. In the progress 
of years these publications were intro¬ 
duced among other nations, who 
almost universally imitated the pecu¬ 
liar style of the Arabians ; and, until 
a comparatively recent date, calcula¬ 
tions relating to the heavenly bodies 
everywhere constituted a principal 
feature of the almanac. A great va¬ 
riety of almanacs in manuscript form, 
prepared during the middle ages, are 

still to be found in manv of the libra- 

%/ 

ries of Europe, and afford the curious 
student a fund of interesting informa¬ 
tion. 

The first printed almanac of which 
we have any authentic evidence, ap¬ 
peared about the middle of the 15th 
century. In 1774, a series of these 
works, printed in both the German and 
Latin languages, was introduced by a 
celebrated German mathematician, and 
for thirty years maintained an uninter¬ 
rupted popularity. Although their 
contents were mainly speculations re¬ 
lating to the localities and movements 
of the heavenly bodies, such was the 
estimation in which they were held, 
that the exorbitant price of ten golden 
crowns each was demanded and paid 
without hesitation. 

In France during the 16th century, 
the contents of the almanac were 
varied by the introduction of political 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


203 


diatribes reflecting severely upon 
prominent statesmen and officials; and 
this was soon supplemented by a record 
of clerical dignitaries, and the genea¬ 
logies of eminent personages, particu¬ 
larly of those connected with the royal 
family. 

In England, until the year 1828, 
astrological almanacs disseminated 
broadcast the seeds of fanaticism and 
superstition, notwithstanding the fact 
that their publication was, by royal 
decree, subject to the inspection and 
approval of the highest prelates in the 
British realm. The uneducated and 
irreligious taste of the age demanded 
the irrational jargon and senseless 
mummeries of charlatans and mounte¬ 
banks. It is a noteworthy and sig- 
nificant fact that, even at as late a 
period as the close of the 18th century, 
almanacs in which all reference to the 
influence of the moon upon the various 
members of the human body was ex¬ 
cluded, proved entirely unsaleable. 
But in 1828, a radical change was 
effected in public sentiment, by the 
“Society for the Diffusion of Useful 
Knowledge.” Through the efforts of 
this Association a more enlightened 
taste was introduced among the people, 
and in a brief period the occupation of 
the astrologer, which till then had 
yielded a princely revenue, ceased to be 
remunerative. Under the auspices of 
this society, the publication of the 
“British Almanac,” a work replete 
with interest and instruction, proved a 
most efficient auxiliary in the reform¬ 
ation of public sentiment. The press 
of England earnestly endorsed their 
philanthropic spirit, and belabored 
with satire and invective the mercena¬ 
ry publishers who had so long pandered 
to the popular superstitions of the age. 
Other almanacs of equally meritorious 
character, several of which are still 


prosperous, were speedily projected, 
and the liberal encouragement with 
which they were received attests the 
more enlightened taste of the people. 

Germany, Belgium and France each 
have publications of this character 
which are held in high esteem. While 
those of the first named countries, with 
few exceptions, repudiate supernatural 
beliefs and the practice of magic arts, 
the most attractive features of the 
almanacs of the French are their 
superstitious fancies and fanaticism. 

In this country Franklin’s “ Poor 
Richard’s Almanac,” published in 1732 

— nearly one hundred years prior to 
the first issue of the British Almanac 

— at once achieved great popularity, 
and its success is an index to the 
genius of the people of his age. At 
the present day our almanacs are as 
radically varied in their contents, as 
the nationalities represented by our 
population, and each truthfully reflects 
the tastes of the class by whom it is 
patronized. Trivial as the unreflecting 
may be disposed to regard this species 
of literature, the history of almanacs, 
with a synopsis of their contents at 
different epochs, from their first intro¬ 
duction to the present day, would pre¬ 
sent an accurate portraiture of the 
gradual advances of the human race in 
civilization and refinement. 


NOISE IN SHELLS. 

There are few of us who do not 
remember the childish wonder we once 
felt at hearing the resonance produced 
by placing a sea-shell to the ear,— an 
effect which fancy has likened to “the 
roar of the sea.” This is caused by 
the hollow form of the shell and its 
polished surface, enabling it to receive 
and return the beatings of all sounds 
trembling in the air around the shell. 







204 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


INDIA RUBBER. 


Remembering tbe almost endless 
variety of uses to which Caoutchouc 
is now applied, we are almost amused 
at the first idea that prevailed concern¬ 
ing its utility. These are suggested 
by the name originally given to it, and 
by which it is still, to a great extent, 
known — India Rubber. One of the 
first instances in which it is mentioned 
as a useful article is in a work of Dr. 
Priestley, published in 1770, in which 
he speaks of it as a substance which 
had just been brought to his notice , and 
was admirably suited to rubbing out 
pencil marks ; and he adds that it was 
sold at the rate of three shillings sterl¬ 
ing for a cubical bit of about one-half 
an inch. 

Though so great a chemist as Dr. 
Priestley had not known of this 
substance before, attention had been 
called to it as one of the products of 
Peru as early probably as 1735, and to 
a greater or less extent it had been 
used for u rubbing out marks 11 from a 
period probably not very long subse- 
sequent to its discover}^. Anything 
coming over the seas from the far East 
or remote West, in those days, was 
called Indian, and hence the name — 
India Rubber. But the natives called 
it Caliuchu , and hence, by only a slight 
modification of sound, came the name 
u Caoutchouc ” — by which it is now 
more commonly, and perhaps correctly, 
called. 

As is well known, Caoutchouc is the 
gum, or, more properly, the dried sap, 
of a tree. The tree producing it 
abounds in various parts of South 
America, and also in the East Indies. 
In the latter region especially this tree 
is represented as one of the noblest in 
the whole forests where it grows, being 
not infrequently as much as seventy- 


five feet in circumference and one hun¬ 
dred feet high, and crowned with a lux¬ 
uriant foliage, so that it can be seen 
miles away. The product, however, 
of this Eastern tree is not regarded as 
equal to that of the American. 

The method of obtaining the gum 
is similar in both regions. The tree 
is tapped at various points along the 
trunk, and even up the larger branches, 
the fluid which runs out being gen¬ 
erally caught in a little cup which 
hangs beneath the incision. About a 
gill is received from each incision in 
the course of the day. The method, 
of afterward preparing this for the 
market varies somewhat. Formerly 
it was allowed to run slowly over some 
clay mould which was of the shape 
desired, and the successive layers of it 
dried, much as heated tallow, for ex¬ 
ample, is cooled in successive coats or 
layers upon the old-fashioned dipped 
candle. The mould afterward was 
broken away, which left the rubber in 
the shape in which the mould had 
formed it. In this manner great num¬ 
bers of bottles and various fanciful 
figures were made and exported from 
Para, which has always been a chief 
seat of this trade. It is not many 
years since rubber shoes were alto¬ 
gether made in this way. Brazil used 
to export several hundred thousand 
pairs of these shoes annually. 

The fluid, when it runs from the 
tree, is of a whitish color, or more 
nearly transparent; and this appear¬ 
ance it still retains when dried in the 
sun. But to hasten its drying a fire 
is more commonly used, and the smoke 
from this colors the gum black, as we 
generally see it. 

The common method of preparing 
it is to build a palm-nut fire, over 
which an earthen jar is placed, with a 
hole in the bottom so arranged that 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


205 


the smoke from the fire shall ascend 
through the jar. By this an Indian 
sits with his vessel of the fluid which 
has been collected from the trees. 
Having a small wooden paddle, he dips 
it into the fluid, which he then holds 
over the smoke till the gum becomes 
hardened, when he dips again, repeat¬ 
ing the process till he has the stick 
covered with the hardened gum of the 
required thickness. This is then cut 
off, and he is ready to begin again ; 
and so he repeats his work, day after 
day. A good day’s work is six pounds. 
More or less impurity is always found 
in the rubber so prepared, but, besides 
this, sand or other material, sometimes 
is purposely introduced between the 
layers of gum, in order to increase the 
weight. 

Another method of bringing Caout¬ 
chouc to market has been to filter the 
fluid as it comes from the trees, and 
mix it with strong ammonia, in the 
proportion of about two ounces of the 
latter to, say, two and a quarter 
pounds of the former. The mixture 
is well shaken and placed in air-tight 
vessels of either glass or tin, which 
are then hermeticalty sealed. From 
these vessels, when afterward it is de¬ 
sired for use, the gum is run out upon 
any smooth surface and exposed to a 
temperature of seventy to a hundred 
degrees, when the ammonia evaporates 
and leaves the rubber in the form of 
the object that holds it. Imported in 
this manner, it is accounted much 
better than when dried. As before 
stated, there is also a difference be¬ 
tween the products of different regions, 
the American being accounted better 
than the East Indian. That from the 
older trees is also better than the 
product of young ones; and that 
which runs in colder weather is better 
than that in warm. 


All through the Amazon valley, and 
up its tributaries, these rubber trees 
abound. People from the lower Ama¬ 
zon are now moving as far up as 
Bolivia to gather this gum. In North¬ 
ern Bolivia it is said there are im¬ 
mense groves of rubber trees as yet 
untouched ; and the demand, which is 
so rapidly increasing, will, at no dis¬ 
tant day, send many adventurous 
settlers thither to bring away rich 
returns from the newer fields of this 
traffic. The entire product of the 
Amazon Valley has very greatly in¬ 
creased of late years. In 1870, it 
amounted to some eleven and a half 
million pounds. Yet the drain upon 
the resources of those immense forests 
has hardly begun. 


MANUFACTURE OF INDIA RUBBER. 

The juice of the Caoutchouc tree 
undergoes many curious mutations be¬ 
fore it becomes a merchantable sheet. 
In a large building, filled with great 
iron troughs and odors far from spicy, 
many men are at work on the rough 
rubber, which is first cut into pieces 
and then partially macerated and 
washed clean from impurities, emerg¬ 
ing at length in the form of long strips 
of a dirty-white color, not unlike frag¬ 
ments of unbleached Turkish toweling. 
It is now ready for the macerating 
mills, wherein it is worked up with hot 
water till it assumes the appearance of 
the chewed India-rubber dear to school 
boys. As the macerator slowly re¬ 
volves, it squeezes from its capacious 
jaws a dark-looking viscid mass, only 
to sieze it again and repeat the opera¬ 
tion until the material becomes homo¬ 
geneous, when it is ready for the 
cylinders. In these it is squeezed, 
under heavy pressure, through sieves 
of exceeding fineness, which take up 









206 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


every remaining particle of dirt or 
grit, and the rubber is now ready to be 
rolled into thick or thin sheets — or 
applied to cylinders under which pass 
miles of silk or cotton cloth, until, 
after some half dozen applications, a 
coating of sufficient thickness to make 
it waterproof has been deposited on the 
fabric — or to be cast in moulds into 
yalves or buffers. “Washers,” and 
such small deer, are cut out of the 
heavy sheets, which are also em¬ 
ployed for making the mats now so 
much in use. These are produced by 
a singularly beautiful process applied 
to sheets of vulcanized Caoutchouc. 
This vulcanizing operation is simple 
enough, consisting merely of the addi¬ 
tion of a quantity of sulphur — often 
combined with coloring matter — to 
the wet paste of rubber, followed by 
baking in large iron ovens filled in 
with lime. Charged with sulphur the 
rubber is rolled into long bands, of 
about half the width of the proposed 
mats. These bands pass on a traveling 
bed under a machine furnished with 
sharp cutters, which inflict stabs at 
regular distances, and finally cut off 
the band into lengths. These are next 
stretched on a frame so as to tear the 
wounds into almost lozenge-shaped 
openings, forming a perfect pattern ; a 
process far superior in economy to that 
of punching out the interstices, and 
thus involving waste of labor and 
material. Stretched on frames the 
mats are now duly baked, and, on leav¬ 
ing the oven, retain perfectly the form 
imposed upon them. To this process 
of vulcanizing, rubber owes much of 
its adaptability to many uses of mod¬ 
ern life. The addition of sulphur, 
followed by baking in lime, imparts to 
the material the power of resisting 
heat, and has extended the area of 
India-rubber goods to the torrid zone. 


Carried a step further, this process pro¬ 
duces ebonite, a material of great 
hardness and density, of which all 
kinds of articles, useful and orna¬ 
mental, may be made; among which 
may be mentioned the cheap imitations 
of jet, which have the advantage of 
being far more durable than the hydro¬ 
carbon imitation. 


HOW TO FURNISH A HOUSE. 

The New York Times draws a pict¬ 
ure of the time when our houses shall 
be furnished as they should be : Heavy 
rugs will partly cover the polished 
floors. Paper of some neutral tint, 
free from glaring figures, will stretch 
from the richly colored dado at the 
bottom to the gay border at the top. 
The picture rod will not be of the 
eternal gilt that wearies us now. It 
will be painted some decided color that 
will harmonize with the prevailing 
shade of the whole room. Before the 
windows and before the doors which 
open outward, curtains, heavy in text¬ 
ure and subdued in tone, edged with 
strong lace, will hang from wooden 
rings which move freely on a slender 
wooden rod fastened to the sheathing. 
Rings and rod will be of the hue of 
the picture-rod above. The single cur¬ 
tain before each opening will be looped 
to one side ; low book cases, not over 
three feet high, of dark wood relieved 
by a few chiseled designs picked out 
in color, will line the wall. No glass 
doors will disfigure them. One gen¬ 
eral pattern varied in each piece, will 
stamp the furniture. Last and greatest, 
an open wood fire, either in the fire¬ 
place or in one of the Franklin stoves 
which still lurk in the garrets of old 
country houses, will cast its cherry 
light over everything. The close stove, 
the register, the grate, and the radiator 











THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


207 


will be tabooed. The blaze of wood 
burning across brazen andirons is 
something so beautiful that no artist 
has ever succeeded in painting it. The 
first of all hints on household tastes 
should be : Have an open wood fire in 
the room in which you mean to live. 


THE HOME OF THE DOLLS. 

ORIGIN OF THE SONNEBERG TOY INDUSTRY. 

The Sonneberg toy industry, which 
arose in the southwestern part of the 
Thuringian Forest, belonging to the 
duchy of Saxe-Meiningen, dates from 
the thirteenth century. At first the 
articles manufactured were of the very 
rudest description, wooden shingles, 
staffs, jugs, plates, etc., which were 
carved by the inhabitants of the moun¬ 
tain villages, wood-cutters and char¬ 
coal-burners, who thus made use of 
their leisure time. Some of these poor 
mountaineers then gathered together 
these wares, and, heavily loaded, wan¬ 
dered with them into Franconia, where 
they disposed of them and returned to 
the mountains, with meal, wool, cloth 
or whatever else they wanted for them¬ 
selves or neighbors. It was a danger¬ 
ous life for these poor fellows, for 
highway robbers were very plentiful, 
and many a poor toy dealer was robbed 
of all he possessed and sometimes even 
murdered. In the following century, 
however, a great improvement took 
place in the condition of the dwellers 
of Thuringia. A highway from Augs¬ 
burg to Leipsic and Dresden was made 
through the forest; and thenceforward 
caravans of Augsburg and Nuremburg 
traders passed along the route, and in 
returning purchased the manufactured 
wares from the villages. Then the 
merchants brought to the moun¬ 
taineers better models from the Berch- 
tesgaden toy makers, taught them how 


to paint their manufactures and improve 
them that they could be exported as the 
wares of Berchtesgaden or Nuremberg. 
This was the commencement of the 
Thuringian toy industry. Then some 
of the more enterprising toy makers 
commenced business as merchants on 
their own account. Sonneberg, then 
a little place of but 700 inhabitants, 
became the recognized centre of the 
trade, and has remained so up to 
the present time. From 1710 to 
1740, Sonneberg merchants established 
branches in St. Petersburg, Stockholm, 
Copenhagen, Christiana, Lubeck, Lon¬ 
don, Moscow, Archangel and Astrakan. 

THE GOOD OLD TIMES — MARBLE MAKING. 

A very different business was that 
of the old Sonnebergers from that of 
the modern people. Toys were not 
purchased in such quantities in those 
days; people were neither so culti¬ 
vated nor so rich, and doubtless the 
children had to be satisfied with the 
simplest and rudest things. But the 
Sonnebergers had also other business 
to attend to. They supplied the 
armies of Europe with flints; they 
manufactured and sold whetstones, 
slates and slate pencils ; they began 
to manufacture marbles, and glass and 
iron manufactories were established in 
the beautiful wooded valleys. Salz¬ 
burg Protestant exiles first introduced 
the manufacture of marbles into Thur¬ 
ingia. They are made in the same 
way now as then, and form a large 
article of Sonneberg export. You 
may find half a dozen marble mills in 
the valley leading from Sonneburg to 
Judenbach. Children and grown up 
persons first break the hard limestones 
into small square pieces, which are aft¬ 
erward ground round in marble mills 
Besides marbles of stone, are those made 
of glass, porcelain and other materials. 








208 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


A CniLD’S PARADISE. 

Sonneburg exports very different 
articles now from what it formerly 
did. Perhaps no better idea can be 
given of the character of the Sonne- 
berg industries than by visiting one 
of the great show-rooms of the place, 
either that of Messrs. Flieschmann 
or of Otto & Cuno Dressel. These 
show-rooms are something wonderful 
in their way, being, in fact, interna¬ 
tional expositions of children’s toys, 
in at least fifteen thousand varieties. 
They are paradises where children 
would go into ecstacies over the 
wonderful and beautiful things exhib¬ 
ited. There are toy men of all races, 
zones and ages, from the little Savoy¬ 
ard up to Prince Bismarck and Kaiser 
William of Germany, in wood, porce¬ 
lain, papier-mache and terra cotta. 
There are Russians and Poles, Ger¬ 
mans and French, tourist Englishmen 
and Brahmin priests, living far more 
peaceably together on the long shelves 
than they generally do in the big 
world. There sits an old grandmam¬ 
ma in her easy chair, and next to her 
Moses lies as comfortably as possible 
in the bulrushes; there are pretty 
winged angels alongside of exagger¬ 
ated Frenchmen and Alpine hunters; 
there is Britannia trying to rule the 
waves, and Germania watching the 
Rhine, and close by a small bust of 
Horace Greeley, finely executed in terra 
cotta. 

Then there are figures of dogs and 
monkeys, drummer boys and jumping 
jacks, clowns, little ladies at minia¬ 
ture pianos, playing a Strauss waltz 
or “ God save the Queen; ” boys on 
wooden horses, peasants from Thurin¬ 
gia and Bavaria, the Marquis of Lome 
and his princess wife, jugglers and 
mountebanks, and u maidens, all for¬ 
lorn, a-milking the cow with a crum¬ 


pled horn,” all in various materials, 
and all very beautifully executed. 

MENAGERIES — THE BEAUTIFUL DOLL BABY. 

There are a thousand other things 
that attract one’s attention. Some are 
exceedingly quaint. There are long 
rows of good old Santa Clauses, warmly 
clad in fur and covered with hoar frost, 
ready to go out at Christmas time with 
their sacks filled with toys and d'olls 
and sweets. There are the mangers of 
Bethlehem, with little wooden figures 
of wise men, and shepherds, and sheep, 
and the little infant Jesus in the man¬ 
ger, in dangerous proximity to the 
cows. Chicken groups of the quaintest 
character — two have just escaped from 
the shell, and stare at each other with 
mutual admiration and surprise. There 
are cats that squall, dogs that bark and 
horses that whinny, and cows that give 
milk, provided it be previously supplied 
through a hole in the back ; elephants 
with trunks that suck up water and 
spirt it out again in a very natural 
manner, and birds that sit in delight¬ 
fully green trees and chirp away until 
they get short of breath. In short, 
there is everything that a child ever 
heard of or could wish for. There are 
the many toy musical instruments 
which boys generally delight to tor¬ 
ment older people with — flutes and 
fiddles, fifes and trumpets, drums and 
tiny pianos; and again needle-guns, 
swords, pistols and cannon enough to 
supply the German army, Landsturm 
and all. And dolls ! They are there 
by the thousand, of all sizes and prices, 
plebeian and noble, some of wood, some 
of porcelain, some of papier-mache, 
some of wax, some lying a hundred 
in a row, others beautifully dressed in 
silks and furs and bonnets, and sleep¬ 
ing quietly in their doll beds or in 
beautifully padded drawers, some sleep- 




THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


209 


ing with their eyes closed and some 
with them open, and some capable of 
crying for mamma or papa when occa¬ 
sion requires it. 

now THE DOLLS ARE BORN. 

A visit to a Sonneberg doll manu¬ 
factory is an exceedingly pleasant and 
surprising affair. In one manufactory 
eighty persons are employed, besides 
150 others who do work at their own 
homes. One manager has on his trade 
list 695 sorts of dolls, each sort having 
six varieties, so we come to the fact of 
the existence of over 5,000 varieties 
of dolls. There are wooden dolls, pot¬ 
faced dolls, papier-mache dolls, wax 
dolls, in the making of which are en¬ 
gaged not only the modelers, wax var- 
nishers, etc., but hundreds of childreu 
and girls to make boots and dresses, 
to curl the hair, and other important 
operations on these fearfully and won¬ 
derfully made creatures. The dolls 
with the wooden heads and wooden 
limbs and porcelain heads are the low¬ 
est germs of the Sonneberg doll. The 
heads are imported, but the movable 
limbs and bodies are cut, carved and 
put together by the dwellers of the 
mountains, many of whom follow 
other occupations. In Judenbach are 
whole families, old and young, male 
and female, engaged in the interesting 
occupation of making wooden dolls. 
The smallest children would have some 
simple operation to do, such as cutting 
or sawing the wood into the proper 
length ; an older child would be able 
to cut out the limbs in the rough, the 
older members would do the finer 
work and fix all the anatomical parts 
together. When the children are sent 
out to guard the cows or the sheep, 
they take wood with them and a simple 
knife, and return home at night with 
quite a stock of legs and arms. The 


curious Papagenos of the Thuringian 
forest, the bird-catchers, are likewise 
armed with a knife and a peculiar little 
piece of wood affixed in front of them, 
and carve the limbs or other pieces of 
toys, when they have set their snares 
and are yet waiting for their little 
feathered victims. 

THE WAX DOLL MANUFACTURE. 

To make a real wax doll or one of 
papier-mache is quite a long process. 
First of all the limbs have to be made. 
The legs, either of pot or cotton, have 
to be filled out with moss and sawdust, 
and the same process is gone through 
with the body and arms, the task being 
entrusted to a number of young wom¬ 
en. The head is more difficult to make. 
First comes the moulding, from a kind 
of whity-brown paste, which when hard 
is almost indestructible. The head is 
moulded in two halves, the back and 
the front, and then the two parts are 
joined together with the same sort of 
paste. The heads are made by the 
thousand, of all shapes and sizes, and 
left for the moment unpolished and 
sickly looking. Then these frame 
pasteboard heads are carried to the 
wax room, where they are passed 
through some severe ordeals. The 
papier-mache model heads are dipped 
in boiling wax, and thus have the 
appearance of wax dolls. But the 
genuine article, the real dolls of wax, 
are made thus: — The boiling wax is 
poured into a plaster mould; it ad¬ 
heres to the sides as it becomes cold, 
and when the mould is taken apart 
there is the beautiful wax head, but 
simply a shell, and of course very 
weak. The head is cast complete, and 
only a small opening is left in the 
crown of the head. Then a workman 
takes the wax shell and very carefully 
lines it throughout with a kind of soft 







210 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


paste about the thickness of cardboard, 
which soon hardens and gives the head 
its strength and durability. After this 
process the head is placed over a hot 
furnace, the wax is permitted to melt 
to a very slight degree, whereupon it 
is dusted with powder made of potato 
meal and alabaster, to give it a delicate 
flesh tint. In another room the head 
is provided with a pair of eyes, and it 
is no easy thing for the workman to 
select two exactly alike. 

Sometimes, as the children know, 
dolls squint, and this proves that the 
workman who put them in was not 
very careful in his work. Another 
very skillful workman then receives 
the head, and finishes off the front ap¬ 
pearance of the eyes, scooping off all 
the wax and affixing the lids in a 
charming manner. Then eyelashes 
have to be affixed, and then the little 
lady has to be provided with teeth, 
which are put in by a skillful work¬ 
man one by one. A still more inter¬ 
esting study is in the hair dressing 
room of a doll manufactory. All the 
dolls that come into this room are 
complete as far as their heads. The 
hair for these heads is first worked on 
to a mesh, which fits the dolls heads so 
nicely that one cannot tell but that it 
is a natural growth. Then the rough 
head of hair, with the doll, is sent to 
the female hair dressers, who are armed 
with combs and brushes and hot curl¬ 
ing tongs, have no small amount of 
good taste, and would make excellent 
ladies 1 maids. The hair is made up in 
the most beautiful manner, in imita¬ 
tion of the very newest fashions ; and 
then when the doll is thus combed and 
curled, it is provided with a delicate 
little chemisette, and placed, with a 
hundred or more little companions, in 
a huge basket, and transported either 
to the great store-rooms or to the doll 


milliner, who provides it with clothing 
and costumes fitting it to appear in 
the great world. This will only give a 
faint idea of how wax dolls are made. 
There are many other interesting parts 
of the process, such as how the baby 
dolls are made to open and shut their 
eyes and to cry ‘ papa 1 and 1 mamma; 1 
but nearly all children have at one 
time or another looked into these 
mysteries of doll life, and a description 
would be superfluous.— N. Y. Tribune . 


RENOVATING FURS. 

Muffs, capes, cuffs and other articles 
of fur should be beaten smartly with a 
switch, then brushed with a stiff brush 
and carefully examined. If there are 
any moth-eaten parts in them, they 
should be cut out, and their places 
supplied with other pieces of fur, 
which match them in color, neatly 
sewed in. The lining and stuffing will 
have to be removed for this purpose. 
White furs should be rubbed over 
smartly with a stick of pipe clay, then 
switched, and afterwards carefully 
brushed. This operation will make 
them look clean. To remove grease 
from furs, they require to be treated 
thoroughly by a person engaged in the 
business ; still, any person may remove 
some of the grease from a muff or 
cape by placing the article on a table, 
covering the spot with a layer of soap¬ 
stone dust about an inch deep, laying 
a sheet of blotting paper upon it, and 
on the top of that a warm flat iron — 
not too hot. The heat of the iron 
softens the grease in the fur, and the 
soapstone dust then absorbs it. Warm 
soapstone dust rubbed among furs, 
then switched out and brushed off, 
improves their appearance. Soapstone 
dust can thus be employed for all kinds 
of fur, and of every color. 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


POVERTY OF GREAT MEN. 

Homer was a beggar; Plautus 
turned a mill; Terence was a slave ; 
Boethius died in jail; Paul Borghese 
had fourteen trades, yet starved with 
them all; Tasso was often distressed 
for a few shillings ; Cervantes died of 
hunger; Camcens, the writer of the 
u Lusiad,” ended his days in an alms¬ 
house; and Vangelas left his body to 
the surgeons to help pay his debts. In 
England, Bacon lived a life of mean¬ 
ness and distress ; Sir Walter Raleigh 
died on the scaffold ; Spencer died in 
want; Milton sold his copyright of 
“Paradise Lost” for £15, and died in 
obscurity; Dryden lived in poverty 
and distress ; Otway perished of hun¬ 
ger ; Lee died in the streets; Steele 
was in perpetual warfare with the 
bailiffs ; Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wake¬ 
field ” was sold for a trifle, to save him 
from the grasp of the law. 


A REMARKABLE FACT. 

Professor Mitchell, when delivering 
one of his splendid lectures on astron¬ 
omy, in Philadelphia, stated that he 
had met, in St. Louis, a man of great 
scientific attainments, who, for forty 
years, had been engaged in Egypt in 
deciphering the hieroglyphics of the 
ancients. This gentleman had stated 
to him (Prof. M.) that he had lately 
unraveled the inscriptions upon the 
coffin of a mummy, now in the London 
Museum, and that in which, by the 
aid of previous observations, he had 
discovered the key to ail the astrono¬ 
mic knowledge of the Egyptians. The 
Zodiac, with the exact positions of the 
planets, was delineated on this coffin, 
and the date to which they pointed 
was the atunmal equinox in the year 
1722, B. C., or nearly 3,600 years ago. 


211 


Prof. Mitchell employed his assistants 
to ascertain the exact positions of 
heavenly bodies belonging to our solar 
system on the equinox of that year 
(1722, B. C.,) and send him a correct 
diagram of them, without having com¬ 
municated his object in doing so. In 
compliance with this the calculations 
were made; and, to his astonishment, 
on comparing the result with the 
statements of his scientific friend al¬ 
ready referred to, it was found that, on 
the 7th day of October, 1722, B. C., the 
moon and planets had occupied the 
exact points in the heavens marked 
upon the coffin in the London Mu¬ 
seum. 


THREAD-MAKING. 

The British manufacturers of thread 
greatly prefer, for staple, the cotton 
known as the long fibre, or Sea Island, 
and the choicest varieties are always 
made from that description of stock, 
whenever it can be procured for the 
purpose. 

In the manufacturing process, the 
cotton is first passed through a picker, 
which separates it and passes it out 
in a downy sheet, and rolls it up in 
a snow-like bundle. It next goes 
through another separating and re¬ 
fining process, in the carding machine, 
leaving the latter in the form of a 
continuous untwisted rope, coiling 
itself round and round into a circular 
tin can placed to receive it. From 
thence it is taken to a comber — a 
most ingenious apparatus — the pecu¬ 
liar duty of which is to select or 
separate the long fibres and reject the 
short ones. 

From the comber it is passed 
through other machinery or processes 
of uniting, drawing, reducing and 
partly hoisting, necessary to its pre- 












212 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


paration for the spinning frames, upon 
which it is finally adapted and placed. 
These spinning frames are self-acting, 
drawing out the fibres and spinning 
them into a very fine thread, or cord, 
six of which are twisted together to 
make the thread, and wind it, when 
spun sufficiently, upon small bobbins 
or cops. When these bobbins are full, 
they are taken to a winding machine, 
and two of those minute threads are 
wound together upon a larger bobbin ; 
when full, these are taken to a twist¬ 
ing machine, the two threads drawn off 
and twisted tightly together, and again 
wound upon cops or small bobbins. 

This is the first process of twisting, 
and the second is similar to it, except 
that three of the twisted threads are 
wound off and again twisted together, 
thus making the six cords required to 
give that strength peculiar to the best 
article. 

The thread thus made is reeled off 
and tied into hanks or bunches, and 
taken to the bleacher} 7 , where it passes 
through the several different processes 
of boiling, bleaching, washing, soaping, 
blueing and drying. 


SPEED OF LIGHT AND RAILWAYS. 

A railway train, at a continuous 
speed of forty miles an hour, would 
pass from the earth to the moon in a 
little more than eight months ; to the 
planet Venus, in seventy-one and a 
half years ; and would reach the sun 
in two hundred and sixty odd years. A 
ray of light will pass from the moon 
to the earth in a trifle over a single 
second; from Venus to the earth in a 
little more than two minutes; from 
the sun in about eight minutes. So 
vast are the distances that separate us 
from these heavenly bodies, and so 
swiftly does light move ! 


THE BOY ASTRONOMER. 


The first transit of Venus ever seen 
by a human eye was predicted by a 
boy, and was observed by that boy just 
as he reached the age of manhood. His 
name was Jeremiah Horrox. 

He lived in an obscure village near 
Liverpool, England. He was a lover of 
books of science, and before he reached 
the age of eighteen he had mastered 
the astronomical knowledge of the day. 
He studied the problems of Kepler, and 
he made the discovery that the tables 
of Kepler indicated the near approach 
of the transit of Venus across the sums 
center. This was about the year 1635. 

Often on midsummer nights the boy 
Horrox might have been seen in the 
fields watching the planet Venus. The 
desire sprang up within him to see the 
transit of the beautiful planet across 
the disc of the sun, for it was a sight 
that no eyes had ever seen, and one 
that would tend to solve some of the 
greatest problems ever presented to the 
mind of an astronomer. So the boy 
began to examine the astronomical ta¬ 
bles of Kepler, and by their aid endeav¬ 
ored to demonstrate at what time the 
next transit would occur. He found an 
error in the tables, and then he, being 
the first of all astronomers to make the 
precise calculation, discovered the exact 
date when the next transit would take 
place. 

He told his secret to one intimate 
friend, a boy, who like himself loved 
science. The young astronomer then 
awaited the event which he had pre¬ 
dicted for a number of years, never 
seeing the loved planet in the shaded 
evening sky without dreaming of the 
day when the transit should fulfill the 
beautiful vision he carried constantly 
in his mind. 

The memorable year came at last — 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


213 


1639. The predicted day of the transit 
came, too, at the end of the year. It 
was Sunday. It found Horrox, the 
astronomer, now just past twenty 
years of age, intently watching a sheet 
of paper in a private room on which 
lay the sun’s reflected image. Over 
this reflection of the sun’s disc on the 
paper, he expected momentarily to see 
the planet pass like a moving spot or 
shadow. 

Suddenly the church bells rang. He 
was a very religious youth and was ac¬ 
customed to heed the church bells as a 
call from heaven. The paper was still 
spotless; no shadow broke the outer 
edge of the sun’s luminous circle. 

Still the cliurch-bells rang. Should 
he go ? A cloud might hide the sun 
before his return, and the expected dis¬ 
closure be lost for a century. 

But Horrox said to himself: 

u I must not neglect the worship of 
the Creator to see the wonderful things 
the Creator has made.” 

But he left the reflected image of 
the sun on the paper, and went into 
the sanctuary. 

When he returned from the service, 
he hurried to the room. The sun was 
still shining, and there, like a shadow 
on the bright circle of the paper, was 
the image of the planet Venus! It 
crept slowly along the bright center, 
like the finger of the Invisible. Then 
the boy astronomer knew that the 
great problems of astronomy were cor¬ 
rect, and the thought filled his pure 
heart with religious joy. 

Horrox died at the age of twenty- 
two. Nearly one hundred and thirty 
years afterward, Venus was again seen 
crossing the sun. The whole astronom¬ 
ical world was then interested in the 
event, and expeditions of observation 
were fitted out by the principal Euro¬ 
pean governments. 


GERMAN KITCHENS. 


The kitchen is a small bare room, 
with a brick or concrete floor ; no oil¬ 
cloth, no cocoanut matting, no carpet, 
no pretense to comfort. You wonder 
how all the routine of cookery and 
scullery can be carried on in it. The 
copper pans on shelf and peg shine 
warm and bright from the walls, the 
window is clean, and buckets full of 
water, with a large brass water-scoop, 
show that all is ready for the day’s 
operations. The mere cooking is far 
more easily accomplished in a German 
than in an English household. The 
hot metal plates, provided with numer¬ 
ous circular holes into which rings can 
be fitted or from which they can be 
hooked out, to suit the exigencies of 
the various pots and pans, accommo¬ 
date any number of kettles or stew- 
pans. These stand, simmering, boiling 
or stewing, according to their position, 
and are plunged into the circular holes 
by which they come nearer to the fire 
when accelerated speed is desirable. 
The servant has here again a vast 
amount of labor saved her; not only 
that she has no hearth-stoning, fender¬ 
polishing, or black-leading to accom¬ 
plish, but that she can get at all her 
plats readily without burning her face 
and hands or straining her muscles as 
with us, by stretching over a wide 
hearth in front of a scorching fire, 
to the detriment alike of her clothes, 
health and temper. I may mention 
that drunkenness is quite unknown 
among female servants in Germany, 
and one cannot help feeling that a 
great deal has been done for them by 
this contrivance of the hot metal plates. 

Knowing the value of fuel, and the 
extreme frugality which is observed in 
all households as to this most expen¬ 
sive item of domestic economy, a Ger- 








214 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION 


man servant will give you no trouble 
in the matter. Having heated water 
for your early coffee (a mere handful 
of firing has been necessary for this), 
she allows the flame to die out. She 
will draw the few living embers to the 
mouth of the grating in the hot plate, 
and lay a piece of peat upon them be¬ 
fore she goes out to market. When 
she returns, a few puffs of breath blow 
the smoldering heap into life, and her 
saucepans will soon be boiling in merry 
concert. The moment dinner is over 
she will fill every available vessel with 
water, so that she has a supply suffi¬ 
ciently warm to wash up with, and the 
fire again dies down. It has to be 
lighted for supper, but the same frugal 
rule is observed, and as the hot plate 
affords no warmth beyond that imme¬ 
diately beneath the saucepans, there is 
no temptation to make a larger fire; 
nor do I remember, in a single in¬ 
stance, having had to remonstrate as 
to waste of fuel. 


HOW TO SPELL. 

Often in writing, a simple word is 
required of the orthography of which 
the writer is not sure. The dictionary 
may be referred to, but is not always 
convenient. An easy mode is to write 
the word on a bit of waste paper, in 
the two or three ways of which you 
are in doubt. Nine times in ten the 
mode which looks right is right. 
Spelling — particularly English spell¬ 
ing — is so completely a work of 
the eye, that the eye alone should be 
trusted. There is no reason why “ re¬ 
ceive and “ believe 11 should be spelt 
differently and yet sounded alike in 
their second syllables. Yet write them 
u recieve 11 and “ beleive,” and the eye 
shows you the mistake at once. The 
best way for young people, and indeed 


people of any age, to learn to spell 
is to practice writing. Cobbett, the 
famous English radical, taught his 
children grammar by requiring that 
they should copy their lessons two or 
three times. These lessons he himself 
gave them in the form of letters ; and 
his French and English grammars are 
two of the most amusing books in the 
English language. Of course “ learn¬ 
ing to spell 11 came in incidentally. 


HOW TO BURN COAL. 

A very common mistake is made 
and much fuel wasted in the manner 
of replenishing coal fires, both in 
furnaces and grates. They should be 
fed with a little coal at a time, and 
often; but servants, to save time and 
trouble, put on a great deal at once, 
the first result being that almost all 
the heat is absorbed by the newly put 
on coal, which does not give out heat 
until it has itself become red hot. 
Hence, for awhile, the room is cold, 
but when it becomes fairly aglow, the 
heat is insufferable. The time to re¬ 
plenish a coal fire is as soon as the 
coals begin to show ashes on their 
surface; then put on merely enough 
to show a layer of black coal covering 
the red. This will soon kindle, and as 
there is not much of it, an excess of 
heat will not be given out. Many 
almost put out the fire by stirring the 
grate as soon as fresh coal is put on, 
thus leaving all the heat in the ashes 
when it should be sent to the new 
supply of coal. The time to stir the 
fire is just when the new coal laid on 
is pretty well kindled. This method 
of managing a coal fire is troublesome, 
but it saves fuel, gives a more uniform 
heat, and prevents the discomfort of 
alternations of heat and cold above 
referred to. 










TIIE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


215 


WONDERS OF A MICROSCOPE. 


Any of our readers can test for 
themselves the curious revelations of a 
microscope by the purchase even of 
a cheap instrument. It will well repay 
the expense incurred. Here is a list 
of some of the wonders seen through 
a microscope : Insects of various kinds 
can be seen in the cavities of a grain 
of sand. Mould is a forest of beautiful 
trees, with the branches, leaves, flow¬ 
ers, and fruits. Butterflies are fully 
feathered. Hairs are hollow tubes. 
The surface of our body is covered 
with scales like fish. A single grain of 
sand would cover one hundred and fifty 
of these scales, and yet a single scale 
covers five hundred pores. Through 
these narrow openings the sweat 
forces itself out like water through 
a sieve. The mites make five hundred 
steps a second. Each drop of stagnant 
water contains a world of animated 
beings swimming with as much liberty 
as whales in the sea. Each leaf has a 
colony of insects grazing on it, like 
oxen on a meadow. A speck of potato- 
rot the size of a pin-head contains about 
two hundred ferocious little animals, 
biting and clawing each other savagely. 


SIMPLE REMEDIES FOR ACCIDENTS. 


Professor Wilder gives these short 
rules for action in case of accident: 
For dust in the eyes, avoid rubbing 
and dash water into them; remove 
cinders, etc., with the round end of a 
lead pencil. Remove insects from the 
ear by tepid water; never put a hard 
instrument into the ear. If an artery 
is cut, compress above the wound; if a 
vein is cut, compress below. If choked, 
get upon all fours and cough. For 
light burns, dip the part in cold water; 
if the skin is destroyed, cover with 


varnish. Smother a fire with carpets, 
etc.; water will often spread burning 
oil, and increase the danger. Before 
passing through smoke, take a full 
breath, and then stoop low ; but if 
carbon is suspected, then walk erect. 
Suck poisoned wounds, unless your 
mouth is sore. Enlarge the wound, or 
better, cut out the part without delay. 
Hold the wounded part as long as can 
be borne to a hot coal or end of a 
cigar. In case of poisoning excite 
vomiting by tickling the throat, or by 
hot water or mustard. For acid pois¬ 
ons, give alkalies; in case of opium 
poisoning, give strong coffee and keep 
moving. If you fall into water, float 
on the back, with nose and mouth pro¬ 
jecting. For apoplexy, raise the head 
and body ; for fainting, lay the person 
flat. 


FIRST USE OF THE HANDKERCHIEF. 

Until the reign of the Empress 
Josephine a handkerchief was thought 
in France so shocking an object that a 
lady would never have dared to use it 
before any one. The word, even, was 
carefully avoided in refined conversa¬ 
tion. An actor who would have used 
a handkerchief on the stage, even in 
the most tearful moments of the play, 
would have been unmercifully hissed ; 
and it was only in the beginning of 
the present century that a celebrated 
actress, Mile. Duchesnoise, dared to 
appear with a handkerchief in her 
hand. Having to speak of this hand¬ 
kerchief in the course of the piece, she 
never could summon enough courage 
to call it by its true name, but referred 
to it as a light tissue. A few years 
later a translation of one of Shakes¬ 
peare’s plays, by Alfred de Vigny, hav¬ 
ing been acted, the word handkerchief 
was used for the first time on the stage 










216 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


amid cries of indignation from a great 
part of the house. I doubt if, even to¬ 
day, French elegantes would carry 
handkerchiefs if the wife of Napoleon 
I. had not given the signal for adopt¬ 
ing them. The Empress Josephine, 
although really lovely, had ugly teeth. 
To conceal them she was in the habit 
of carrying very small handkerchiefs, 
adorned with costly laces, which she 
continually raised to her lips. Of 
course all the ladies of the court 
followed her example, and the hand¬ 
kerchief rapidly became an impor¬ 
tant and costly part of the feminine 
toilet; so much so that the price of a 
single handkerchief of the trousseau 
of the Duchess of Edinburgh would 
make the fortune of a necessitous 
family. 


HOW TO MAKE SACHETS OR SCENT- 

BAGS. 


Various powders, etc., placed in silk 
bags or ornamental envelopes are 
agreeable to smell of, and also econom¬ 
ical for imparting a pleasant odor to 
linen and clothes as they are packed 
away in drawers, for they prevent 
moths. 

For heliotrope powder, take half a 
pound of orris root, one quarter of 
a pound of ground rose leaves, two 
ounces powdered tonquin bean, one 
ounce vanilla bean, one-half drachm 
grain musk, two drops otto of almonds ; 
mix it all by sifting through a coarse 
sieve. This is one of the best sachets 
ever made, and perfumes table-cloths, 
sheets, pillow-cases and towels deli¬ 
ciously. 

For lavender powder, take one 
pound of powdered lavender, one- 
quarter of a pound of gum benzoin, 
and one-quarter of an ounce of otto 
of lavender. 


For patchouli, use one-half a pound 
of patchouli ground fine, and a very 
little of otto patchouli. This herb is 
often sold in its natural state as im¬ 
ported, and is tied up in half-pound 
bundles. 

Sandal wood satchet powder is good, 
and consists of the wood ground fine. 
Cedar wood, when ground, forms a 
body for other pow T ders, and will keep 
moths at a distance. Dried fennel, 
when ground, is also used for scent 
bags, and ground nutmeg is liked for 
this purpose. 


ANCIENT BILLS OF LADING. 

Some papers of Sir William Pepper- 
ill, who, in ante-revolutionary times, 
resided at Kittery, Maine, have recently 
come into possession of a resident of 
Newburyport, and the Herald of that 
place copies a bill of lading dated June, 
1726: “Shipped by the grace of God 
in good order and well condition, by 
Wm pepperills on their own acct. and 
risque, in and upon the good Briga, 
called the William, whereof is master 
under God for this present * voyage 
George King, and now riding at an¬ 
chor in the river Piscataqua and by 
God’s grace bound to Barbadoes,” and 
then follows the freight, lumber, shin¬ 
gles, oak staves, timber, fish, yokes and 
bows, winding up, “ and so God send 
the good Briga to her desired port in 
safety. Amen.” Accompanying this 
bill of lading is a letter of orders to 
Capt. King as to how he is to proceed 
and to deliver the freight to Thomas 
Harper, esq., merchant of Barbadoes. 
The spelling is rather uncertain: in 
the indenture it is “ marchant,” and in 
the letter “merchant.” There is also 
another letter to Capt. Foxall Curtice, 
dated Aug. 13th, 1717, master of the 
brig William and Jane, going to New- 











THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


217 


foundland, where he is to buy French 
brandy and claret wine. The captain 
is to be secret about it, although there 
was no prohibitory liquor law at that 
time. 


MUSK. 


Musk is a secretion, and is obtained 
from the musk-deer (Moschus moschi- 
ferus ), a pretty little animal inhabiting 
the higher mountain ranges in China, 
Tonquin and Thibet. The musk is 
found in a small pocket or pouch 
under the belly of the deer. The 
hunters cut off this pouch, which, be¬ 
coming dry, preserves its contents, * 
and in this state the best article 
reaches our markets. Musk when 
moderately dry, is an unctuous powder 
of reddish brown color. It gives out 
a powerful odor of a warm, aromatic 
character and most wonderful persist¬ 
ency. Blending well with almost 
every other scent, it discovers but 
little oi its own peculiarity in com¬ 
pounds when used in proportion, and 
yet gives them great permanency. 
In point of general usefulness to the 
perfumer, it is probably unequaled by 
any other substance; for, although 
coarse and undesirable in a pure state, 
the most popular compounds are those 
in which it is an ingredient. Genuine 
musk is very costly, being worth, 
when separated from its sac and all 
extraneous matter, from twenty-five 
to thirty-five dollars the ounce. Its 
great strength compensates in a meas¬ 
ure for its price. One part of musk, 
it is said, will scent more than three 
thousand parts of inodorous powder. 


Post-offices were first established 
in France in 1464 ; in England, 1581; 
in Germany, 1641. 


A MANTELPIECE ORNAMENT. 

A pretty mantelpiece ornament may 
be obtained by suspending an acorn, 
by a piece of thread tied around it, 
within half an inch of the surface of 
some water contained in a vase, tum¬ 
bler or saucer, and allowing it to be 
undisturbed for several weeks. It will 
soon burst open, and small roots will 
seek the water; a straight and taper¬ 
ing stem, with beautiful, glossy green 
leaves will shoot upward and present a 
very pleasing appearance. Chestnut- 
trees mav be grown in the same man- 
ner, but their leaves are not so beauti¬ 
ful as those of the oak. The water 
should be changed once a month, tak¬ 
ing care to supply water of the same 
warmth. Bits of charcoal added to it 
will prevent the water from souring. 
If the little leaves turn yellow, add one 
drop of ammonia into the utensil which 
holds the water, and they will renew 
their luxuriance. Another pretty or¬ 
nament is made by wetting a sponge 
and sprinkling it with canary, hemp, 
grass, or other seeds. The sponge 
should be refreshed with water daily, 
so as to be kept moist. In a few 
days the seeds will germinate, and the 
soonge will soon be covered with a 
mass of green foliage. 

STAGES. 

The first stage coach in America 
started from Boston from the site of 
No. 90 North street, in 1661. The 
first line of stage coaches between 
Boston and New York was established 
in 1732, a coach leaving each city once 
a month ; fourteen days were required 
to complete the journey. In 1802 the 
mail stage started from Boston for 
New York on Monday morning at 
eight o’clock, and was due in New 
York at noon on Friday. 











218 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


MODERN SILVER WARE. 


It was but a little before the Ameri¬ 
can Revolution (about 1760) that silver 
table-spoons began to exclude those of 
wood, horn and pewter, from the tables 
of the quality in England, and even 
teaspoons of silver are said to have 
been rare before the time of Queen 
Anne (1691 to 1713). To this day, if 
we are rightly informed, no spoons of 
solid silver, large or small, much less 
silver forks, are to be found in com¬ 
mon use among the “ plain people ” 
(with rare exceptions) of any European 
country. In the United States, on the 
contrary, it is unnecessary to inform 
the American readers of to-day that, 
as a rule, the farmer is but thriftless 
and the mechanic but a journeyman, 
whose spoons and perhaps forks are 
not of solid silver. The journeyman 
furnishes his table with plated articles 
of this class, or at worst brittania, and 
only the rude day-laborer contents 
himself with tinned or pewter ware. 
Plated tea-services, castors, salvers, 
pitchers, ladles, cake and fruit baskets, 
etc., are too common to be noticed, 
unless wanting, on the tables of those 
in easy circumstances, and it is no rare 
distinction if they are of solid silver. 
In fact, for bridal gifts nothing less 
than solid silver is thought respectable, 
and in this way, so universal has the 
custom of bridal gifts become, hardly 
any comfortable young couple now be¬ 
gin housekeeping without a fair show 
of genuine table silver, as far at least 
as spoons, forks, butter, fruit, pie and 
fish-knives, napkin rings, and such 
trifles. 

The beauty of the ordinary Ameri¬ 
can table, with its showy damask and 
china, sparkling cut glass and lustrous 
utensils of silver, all disposed in the 
tasteful symmetry native to the Amer¬ 


ican housewife, is a power, and one 
that goes too near the springs of 
moral as well as aesthetic culture to be 
lightly esteemed by the most serious 
observer. The development of this 
crowning symbol of domestic refine¬ 
ment is worthy our attention. A 
critical journal has remarked that an 
American lady’s idea of a dinner is a 
handsome service of silver and china, 
with two or three vases of choice hot¬ 
house flowers. We suppose it was a 
typical American lady^, among the 
u plain .people,” too, who stated to us 
the elements of a meal, as she under¬ 
stood it, in the following series : First, 
order, (including elegance and good 
attendance); second, intellectual con¬ 
versation ; and, lastly, something to 
eat. 

Plated ware originated in England 
about the middle of the last century, 
the first application having been made 
to small articles in 1742, by Thomas 
Bolsover, a Sheffield mechanic. The 
new elegance brought within the 
means and the supposed proprieties 
of the middle class, took the name of 
u Sheffield Plate,” not from the process 
of plating, but from the silver ware 
of which it was an imitation. Plate, 
in this sense, is not our Saxon word 
cognate with fiat , but was borrowed 
from the Spanish plata (silver), and 
applied to all utensils made of the 
precious metals, in whatever form. 

To our elderly readers “ Sheffield 
Plate ” will still have a familiar sound, 
for under this name the beauty of 
silver was first popularized in America, 
and to a far greater extent than even 
in England. Probably the Sheffield 
and Birmingham manufacturers of 
plated ware at one period exported 
more goods to this country than they 
sold at home. 

A further and greater advance was 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


219 


made in 1838, by the invention of 
electroplating, or rather, the practical 
application of the method which had 
been known, but strangely neglected, 
for thirty years. At one stroke, 
plating was greatly reduced in cost, 
fts applications indefinitely extended, 
and its effects incomparably improved. 
Everybody in America is now familiar 
with the ordinary wares of our numer¬ 
ous electroplating companies, and 
there is hardly a cottage worth two 
hundred dollars in the country where 
such wares are not found; although 
the rich plating of the Elkintons, in 
England, and the Gorhams in Amer¬ 
ica, is too high in first cost for the 
strictly popular demand. 

Within half a century, the business 
of the American silversmith was 
mostly confined to making spoons to 
order for the jewelers, who rarely pur¬ 
chased more than one or two dozen at 
a time, for particular orders. About 
1825 it was noticed that the silver¬ 
smiths began to venture into the man¬ 
ufacture of light spoons for general 
sale through a class of cheap jewelry 
peddlers, who are still well remem¬ 
bered by natives of New England of 
that period. The Province manufact¬ 
ure had begun to be extended and 
brought into national relations by the 
enterprise of a young goldsmith named 
Jabez Gorham, who adapted his work 
to the general requirements of the 
trade, and made his way with it into 
the Boston market by underselling 
and outpushing the unmercantile me¬ 
chanics of his craft. The droll ac¬ 
count the old gentleman, who died 
only a few years ago, used to give of 
his semi-annual marketings in Boston, 
is more expressive than a general de¬ 
scription could be, and of the very 
modest status of the now imposing 
silver trade of our chief cities: how 


the Boston jewelers assembled at his 
lodgings, pursuant to notice, that they 
might be all admitted at the same 
moment, without partiality to view 
and divide the little trunkful of new 
jewelry spread out upon the bed. 


DIFFERENT KINDS OF EYES. 

No branch of science has been more 
thoroughly mastered than optics. The 
principle of vision must be essentially 
the same in all eyes, but they differ re¬ 
markably according to the needs of the 
animals. Birds of lofty flight, as the 
condor, eagles, vultures, and carrion¬ 
seeking prowlers of the feathered race, 
have telescopic visions, and thus they 
are enabled to look down and discover 
their unsuspecting victims. As they 
approach noiselessly from above, the 
axis of vision changes — shortening, so 
that they can see as distinctly within 
one foot from the ground as when at 
an elevation of one mile in the air 

This fact explains the balancing of a 
fish-hawk on its pinions half a mile 
above a still pond, watching for fish. 
When one is selected, down the savage 
hunter plunges, the focal axis varying 
always to the square view of its intend¬ 
ed prey. As they ascend, the axis is 
elongated by a curious muscular ar¬ 
rangement, so as to see so far off again. 

Snails have their keen eyes at the 
extremity of flexible horns, which they 
can protrude or draw in at pleasure. 
By winding the instrument round the 
edge of a leaf or stalk they can see how 
matters stand on the opposite side. 

The hammer-headed shark has its 
wicked-looking eyes nearly two feet 
apart. By one effort they can bend 
the thin edges of the head, on which 
the organs are located, so as to examine 
the two sides of an object the size of a 
full-sized codfish. 








220 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Flies have immovable eyes. They 
stand out from the head like half an 
apple, exceedingly prominent. Instead 
of smooth hemispheres they have an 
immense number of facets, resembling 
old-fashioned glass watch seals, each 
one reflecting the light directly to the 
optic retina. That explains why they 
cannot be approached in any direction 
without seeing what is coming. 


REAPERS AND MOWERS. 

Reapers are not as modern an in¬ 
vention as many would suppose. The 
first account of a machine to reap grain 
appears to be that described by Pliny, 
(A. D. 23). He says in the extensive 
fields of the provinces of Gaul, a large 
hollow frame, with projecting teeth on 
the edge and supported on two wheels, 
is driven through the standing grain 
by an ox yoked behind it. In this 
manner the ears are torn off and fall 
into the frame. Pallachus, an Eastern 
prelate, wrote in the fourth century, A. 
D., giving a description of a contriv¬ 
ance which was similar to our leading 
machines. He says they have a row of 
sharp teeth at the front edge, between 
which the straw passed, the heads or 
ears are caught by the teeth and fall 
into the cart, the broken stalks being 
left behind. 

One of the first modern machines 
which resembled the old Gallic imple¬ 
ment, where the heads were stripped 
from the straw, was invented in Eng¬ 
land by William Pitt, in 1786. The 
first patent for a reaping machine, in 
England, was obtained by Joseph 
Boyce, July 4tli, 1799. Henry Ogle, a 
school-master of Remington in 1822, 
seems to be the first who invented and 
used the reciprocating cutter. Up to 
this time, it was almost universal to 
hitch the horses behind the implement. 


This machine was very simple, and it 
was estimated it would cut fourteen 
acres per day with ease. The working 
people at that time threatened to kill 
the maker, if he persevered any further 
in trying to bring it into use. 

In 1826, the Rev. Patrick Bell, of 
Scotland, invented an apparatus for 
reaping grain, which is the oldest 
known machine in use. It cut a swarth 
of five feet with the power of a single 
horse, about an acre an hour. This 
machine was on exhibition at the 
World’s Fair of 1851, in London. One 
of the first patents granted in America, 
was to Richard French and J. T. Haw¬ 
kins, of New Jersey, on May 17, 1803. 
Obed Hussey’s machine was patented 
in 1833, and contained nearly all the 
main features of those used at the pres¬ 
ent time. His machine was intended 
to cut both grain and grass, and had a 
reciprocating knife and a slotted guard 
finger, both of which are now used in 
all harvesters. McCormick, of Virginia, 
patented his reaper in 1845 and 1847, 
and received a medal at the Worlds’ 
Fair, in 1851. Both Hussey and Mc¬ 
Cormick changed their machines by 
substituting one wheel for the two 
wheels previously used. Soon after the 
two-wheeled machines came into use, 
having the hinged finger-bar, including 
the Buckeye and Cayuga Chief. In 
1855, at a competitive trial, about 40 
miles from Paris, the American ma¬ 
chine cut an acre in 22 minutes, the 
English in 66 minutes, and the Alge¬ 
rian in 72 minutes. Among the most 
prominent machines manufactured, 
may be mentioned the Buckeye, Cham¬ 
pion and Excelsior machines, the most 
of which are constructed with the view 
of being durable and possessing all of 
the latest improvements that the com¬ 
bined skill and capital which the man¬ 
ufacturers have at their command. 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


221 


SPECIFIC GRAVITY. 


This is a scientific term, meaning 
the weight of a body compared with 
that of any given standard. For all 
solids and liquids, water is the stand¬ 
ard. This plan was invented by 
Archimedes, the famous Greek mathe¬ 
matician. Hydrometers, for ascertain¬ 
ing gravities, have been in use for 
nearly fifteen hundred years. A marked 
improvement was made on this instru¬ 
ment in the year 1100, by Alhazen, a 
Saracen. Albu-r-Raihan, another Sar¬ 
acen, had made the first table of specific 
gravities a hundred years before. An¬ 
other table was made in the seventeenth 
century, by Athanasius Kircher. This 
was the first table of the kind used in 
Europe. 


TAPIOCA. 

Many persons are familiar with this 
as an article of diet who do not know 
how it is obtained, or really what it is. 
It is the product of the cassava root. 
There are two varieties of the cassava 
plant, both natives of South America; 
the one is the bitter, and the other the 
sweet cassava, but both are used for 
food. The first, in its natural state, is 
highly poisonous, and the Indians use 
its juice for poisoning their arrows. 
It is from this cassava that tapioca is 
made, but with all the poison removed. 
The poisonous principle has been 
found to be very volatile, hence, by 
submitting the roots to the action of 
heat, it is all driven off; it is only 
when eaten raw that it is highly 
dangerous. The roots are first washed, 
then reduced to a pulp, and the juice 
allowed to drain out. The pulp is 
then heated in a pan until it becomes 
slightly roasted ; when in this state it 


forms cassava bread, the principal food 
of the natives. The juice which has 
been allowed to filter from the pulp is 
of a milky color, and is allowed to 
settle for some time in wooden dishes. 
A deposit of starch then falls to the 
bottom; the poisonous juice is now 
run oft, the starch washed and all the 
moisture driven off by putting it on 
hot plates until it is dry. It is after¬ 
ward granulated in sieves, and in that 
state forms the tapioca of which very 
excellent puddings are made. The 
heating of this starch on the hot plates 
drives off all the poison. 

Recent experiments have been made 
in France by distilling the cassava root 
and condensing the vapors, for the 
purpose of ascertaining the nature of 
its poisonous properties. A very small 
quantity of prussic acid was thus ob¬ 
tained, about 0.004 per cent, of the 
vapor, but the roots employed in the 
experiment were not fresh, hence it is 
reasonable to suppose that they con¬ 
tain more of this volatile poison when 
fresh dug from the ground, as cows 
have instantly dropped down dead 
from eating them. No other poison¬ 
ous substance was found. Cassava 
contains a great amount of starch, no 
less than 23 per cent., and 5 per cent, 
of sugary matter. 


HISTORY OF SLATE PEXCILS. 

Thirty years ago all the slate pencils 
used were manufactured in Germany. 
She then supplied America with this 
commodity. In 1850, there was a 
young man living in West Rutland, 
Vt., eighteen years of age, who fortu¬ 
nately discovered a supply of stone for 
making a first-class article of slate 
pencils. He began by whittling out 
the pencils and selling them to school 
children. Being a better article than. 









222 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


that for sale in the stores, he found a 
readv sale for all he could whittle out. 

He argued that if they would sell 
thus readily at home, they would sell 
readily everywhere. He became pos¬ 
sessed of the idea that there was a for¬ 
tune in the business, and his dream 
has been realized. This quarry of slate 
pencil stone was situated in a large 
ravine, four miles north of Castleton, 
Vt., near Bomoseen Lake. The land 
on which it was situated was for sale 
at one hundred dollars. He purchased 
it, and began operations by sawing out 
the pencils and whittling them round. 

The business of making them grew 
immensely on his hands so that it was 
impossible to keep a clean order book. 

Machinery was invented to facilitate 
the process, which has reached some¬ 
thing like perfection, and enormously 
increased the production of pencils. 
At present the quarry and mills are 
owned by a joint stock company. 
They are valued at three hundred 
thousand dollars. From fifty to 
one hundred thousand pencils are 
turned out daily, and upward of a 
hundred hands are employed in the 
quarry and in the mill. 

After the stone is quarried it passes 
through four processes before it is 
made into pencils. It is sawed into 
rectangular blocks five inches by seven, 
and split by hand into slabs of the 
same length and breadth, which are 
carefully assorted. These slabs pass 
through a machine which shaves them 
all to the uniform thickness of a quar¬ 
ter of an inch, when they are ready 
for the final process. 

The machinery for reducing these 
slabs to pencils, consists of iron plates 
fitted to receive them, fastened to an 
endless chain which passes over rollers 
at either end. 

These plates, of which there are 


about twenty on a chain, each receive 
a slab, and as it passes from one roller 
to the other, the pencils are cut and 
rounded out half way to completion 
by semi-circular knives, a dozen differ¬ 
ent sets of knives being firmly fastened 
above them. 

The slabs are then turned over and 
passed back through another machine 
exactly similar, and a perfect pencil is 
the product. 

They are counted out by children 
and packed one hundred in a box. 
The pencils are sold by the manufactu¬ 
rers at half a cent a piece or fifty cents 
a box, or ten times the cost of pencils 
in Germany, where one thousand can 
be bought for less than fifty cents. 
Being made from a superior article of 
stone they are used throughout the 
United States in preference to those 
imported from Germany. 

The slate pencil business, like the 
pin business, is a small one in itself, 
but becomes large where it is necessary 
to supply all the school children of 
America with pencils. Thirty years 
ago the whole idea of it was in the 
brain of a young Yankee boy. To-day 
it is a business involving over a quar¬ 
ter of a million of money. It has 
been and will continue to be a profita¬ 
ble business, as this is the only quarry 
and slate pencil mill in the United 
States. 

Besides manufacturing the pencils 
the firm have a mill for grinding the 
stone to flour, bolting it finer than 
fine flour, to be used in the process of 
manufacturing paper, especially wall 
paper. This flour sells for twenty dol¬ 
lars a ton. The stone from which the 
pencils are made contains upwards of 
thirty per cent, of alumina, from five 
to eight per cent, more than the stone 
from which slate pencils are manufact¬ 
ured in Scotland. 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


223 


PAPER—ITS MATERIAL AND USES. 


From the best authorities, it would 
appear that cotton was the first mate¬ 
rial used in the manufacture of paper, 
after papyrus. The exact date is not 
known, hut it is pretty well authen¬ 
ticated that paper from this material 
was made and used in the eleventh 
century. The Chinese, since the deca¬ 
dence of the papyrus manufacture in 
Alexandria, Egypt, may be considered 
the greatest manufacturers and users 
of paper. With them this material 
occupies a place of importance not 
equalled by any other one substance 
in use by us. They employ it for 
clothing, building, decorations, toys, 
and a hundred other necessities. They 
utilize linen rags, the inner bark of 
trees, the fibres of cane and bamboo, 
and for “ rice paper ” the stems of a 
wild leguminous plant. The soles of 
hoots, umbrellas, hats, garments resem¬ 
bling in texture and durability woven 
fabrics, kitchen and table utensils, 
boxes, bowls, etc., this ingenious peo¬ 
ple fashion from paper. Even their 
pocket handkerchiefs are made of it; 
and some specimens of their paper are 
scarcely inferior in toughness and elas- 
ticitv to the best textile fabrics. 

We have scarcely reached their apt¬ 
ness in the quality of the paper, and 
are far behind them in adapting the 
material to our every day needs. We 
make paper water-pipes, row boats, 
paper hats, and bonnets, paper collars, 
cuffs, and shirt-fronts. We use it for 
twine to tie up paper packages; a 
specimen for machine belting is now 
on our table. It is doubtful if any 
other material is susceptible of a great¬ 
er diversity of uses ; yet we seem to 
lack the means of producing it cheaply 
enough to supersede other and more 
costly substances. It is hardly to be 


believed that knowledge of the manu¬ 
facture, the various processes to adopt 
it to manifold uses, is lacking, but 
rather the difficulty of procuring the 
material from which it is made pre¬ 
vents us from making a more extended 
use of it. 

For some years past paper “ stock ” 
has been very dear. Rags advanced in 
price, as cotton went up. Wood fibres 
and straw have been tested with a 
view of keeping down the continually 
increasing price of rags and furnishing 
a cheaper and equally valuable mate¬ 
rial. Yet these, especially the latter, 
are not new attempts. So long ago as 
1756 the Germans used straw, and in 
1775 a book was printed in France the 
paper of which was made of linden or 
basswood. In 1800 good white paper 
was made in England from straw and 
wood. It is certain that neither straw 
nor wood have yet been found equal to 
cotton and linen as a material for the 
production of paper. 


HISTORY AND NATURE OF ALCOHOL. 


The intoxicating quality of wine 
was known in the time of the patri¬ 
archs ; but, although the early Egyp¬ 
tians were acquainted with fermented 
barley wort, it is only within the his¬ 
tory of the present generation that 
the properties of the active principle 
in the wine and wort have been clearly 
ascertained. 

The alchemists of Arabia invented 
the still, and it appears that one Abu- 
casis was the first person who separated 
the crude spirit by distillation from 
wine. He it was who gave it the 
name of u alcohol,” the meaning of 
which is to paint. This term was 
probably used because spirit will dis¬ 
solve certain colors and resins and 
render them fluid, which water will not. 








224 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Raymond Lully, a chemist of the 
thirteenth century, found that alcohol, 
produced by the ordinary process, con¬ 
tained one-half water, and he has the 
credit of being the real discoverer of 
spirits of wine. Still, Lowitz, a Ger¬ 
man chemist of our day, was the first 
to prepare real alcohol. Alcohol is so 
cohesive with water that it is only 
with the greatest chemical skill that 
the least portion of water combined 
with it can be separated. 

There are only two methods of 
forming this extraordinary body: the 
one by fermentation of saccharine 
fluids, which has been known from 
time immemorial; the other (a recent 
discovery) by forcing olefiant gas 
through sulphuric acid. It was Han- 
nel who made the last discovery ; and, 
although nothing of importance has 
yet resulted from it, yet we may 
confidently look forward to great ad¬ 
vantages. Hannel, and more recently 
Berthelot, have shown that alcohol 
can be produced from coal. By the 
fermentation process it is known that 
alcohol is derived from starch, being 
converted first into sugar, then into 
glucose, then into alcohol. The Ma- 
hommedans, Hindoos and Chinese, all 
abstain from alcohol on rekgious prin¬ 
ciples. 

Alcohol is a transparent fluid. It 
has never been congealed or rendered 
solid by cold. It is considerably 
lighter than water, as about 79 is to 
100. It burns with almost colorless 
flames, and leaves no trace of residue. 
Alcohol, when free from water, will 
boil at a temperature equal to a hot 
day in Summer — 80 degrees Fahr. It 
expands immensely with little heat, 
hence it is used in the thermometer to 
measure the increase arid decrease of 
heat. Alcohol dissolves resin, attars, 
ethers, alkaloids, and numerous other 


bodies ; hence it is of immense service 
in the arts and manufactures. Many 
trades would cease without alcohol, 
it being an essential ingredient in 
many things; we therefore could not 
dispense with it. 


TASTE AND SMELL UTILIZED. 

The two senses of tasting and 
smelling are usually considered mainly 
as servants, capable of contributing to 
our luxurious pleasures, rather than 
as aids to business success; yet some 
departments of business could hardly be 
conducted without their employment. 
The sale and purchase of liquors and 
wines are consummated almost en¬ 
tirely by the help of taste and smell. 
Although the strength may be judged 
by the size and appearance of bubbles 
formed when shaken, by the sinking 
or floating of olive oil in them, and 
their appearance when turned, yet the 
expert judges more readily and cor¬ 
rectly of their strength, as well as 
purity, flavor, etc., b} r tasting and 
smelling. In the great wine marts of 
Europe, the business of wine taster is 
a distinct profession. Tobacco and 
hops are judged by the purchaser fully 
as much by smell as by sight and 
touch; and it is wonderful what ex¬ 
pertness is attained bv professional 
judges by the cultivation of this sense ; 
their judgment being practically in¬ 
fallible. 

But the testing of the tea exhibits, 
in a more marked manner, the use of 
taste and smell in mercantile transac¬ 
tions. In every wholesale tea house 
will be found a row of tea-cups with 
a little furnace or lamp for heating 
water. There is no sugar or milk. In 
the side of every chest of tea, ranged 
in tiers along the walls, is a small hole 
stopped by a cork. The taster draws 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


225 


the cork, takes a few grains of tea in 
his hand, smells it, then puts it in a 
cup, pours a little hot water on it, 
tastes, and his judgment is formed, the 
character of the tea is fixed. Fre¬ 
quently the smelling is sufficient, and 
decidedly the professional taster de¬ 
clares the character of file article he has 
tasted. Not less remarkable is the fact 
that there is seldom any marked disa¬ 
greement between the estimates made 
by different individuals. The profes¬ 
sion of tea taster in our large cities is 
quite lucrative. Merchants purchase 
largely, relying implicitly on the rep¬ 
resentations of the expert; and it is 
seldom their confidence is misplaced, 
whatever u tricks of the trade 11 there 
may be attempted to deceive the taster. 

The gift, if so it may be called, of 
being a successful tea taster, is not 
general, although it might be supposed 
that experience would be all that is 
necessary to insure perfection, or at 
least an approximation to it. The 
profession is severely taxing to the 
nervous system, affecting the subject 
similarly to alcohol or tobacco when 
used to excess. 


LIQUID GLUE. 

To 1 oz. of borax, in a pint of boil¬ 
ing water, add 2 ozs. of shellac, and 
boil till the shellac is dissolved. An¬ 
other — Dissolve 8 ozs. of the best glue 
in half a pint of water; that being 
done, add slowly, and keep stirring, 
ozs. strong aquafortis. Keep well 
corked ready for use. Another — A 
useful glue for fastening papers togeth¬ 
er only by being wetted by the tongue 
is made as follows: Dissolve 1 pound of 
glue or gelatine in water, and add half 
a pound of brown sugar, and boil them 
together. Make into cakes by pouring 
into shapes. It becomes solid when cold. 


HOW TO CHECK COUGHS. 


Dr. Brown-Sequard, in a late lecture 
delivered by him in Boston, stated that 
there are many facts which show that 
morbid phenomena of respiration can 
always be stopped by the influence of 
arrest. Coughing, for instance can be 
stopped by pressing on the nerves of 
the lip in the neighborhood of the 
nose. A pressure there may prevent 
a cough when it is beginning. It is 
generally known that sneezing may 
be stopped by this plan, but it is new 
to many that it can check coughing. 
Dr. Brown-Sequard, however, is a 
great authority, says the Medical 
Press and Circular , and asserts it. 
He added that pressing in the neigh- 
hood of the ear, right in front of the 
ear, may stop coughing. It is also 
preventive of hiccough, but much less 
so than of sneezing or coughing. 
Pressing very hard on the top of the 
mouth inside is also a means of stop¬ 
ping coughing ; and to show that the 
will has immense power, he mentioned 
that there was a French nurse who 
used to say, ;t The first patient who 
coughs here will be deprived of his 
food to-day.” It was exceedingly rare 
that a patient coughed. 


A HINT FOR WOOD-WORKERS. 


The usual practice of cabinet-makers 
and workers in wood generally, in 
making a glue joint on end wood, is to 
apply a thin watery solution of glue, 
which serves the purpose of a sizing, to 
the surfaces which are to be joined, al¬ 
lowing it to dry before making a final 
application of the glue. The object of 
the sizing, which is to prevent the ab¬ 
sorption of the glue by the wood, may 
be as effectually accomplished, in all 
ordinary cases, by simply rubbing the 









226 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


joints thoroughly with white chalk 
before gluing. The chalk not only pre¬ 
vents the glue from being absorbed, 
but combines with it and forms a sort 
of cement with good effect upon the 
firmness of the joint. 

Many cabinet-makers will remember 
an advertisement which was extensive¬ 
ly published some years ago, in which 
an ingenious person in one of the prin¬ 
cipal eastern cities offered, on receipt 
of fifty cents to send an infallible 
recipe “for making glue joints on end 
wood without sizing. 11 A good many 
half dollars were harvested by the 
advertiser, in return for which he sent 
to each of the writers a slip of paper 
containing the words above quoted. 
“ Rub the joints well with white chalk. 11 
The recipe is a good one, and ought to 
be worth at least half a dollar, as it ap¬ 
plies equally well to end, mitre or side 
joints. 


RULES FOR SHOWING A GARDEN. 


There are two rules for taking a 
party over a garden, which, if violated 
in one single instance, will do infinite 
harm in respect to the best effect. 
The first is, never to take strangers 
over your garden against the sun. It 
is worse than throwing dust in their 
eyes, if there is an eye among them. 
And the second rule is, to be sure not 
to let strangers see the best parts of 
the garden first. Take them to mod¬ 
erate first, then let each turn reveal 
a better scene than the last, and let 
the last itself be the grand climax. 
As long as they live, they will never 
forget the good impression. 


Comedy and Tragedy were first 
exhibited at Athens five hundred years 
before Christ. 


FACTS FROM THE CENSUS. 


Some curious facts come to light 
upon examining the figures of the late 
census relating to manufactures. In 
addition to the conclusions reached as 
to the relative importance of several 
principal cities in the aggregate of their 
productions, we learn which States ex¬ 
cel in each separate branch of manufact¬ 
ure, and how large a proportion of the 
country’s total production it supplies. 
Thus, in the manufacture of cotton 
goods, Massachusetts takes precedence, 
turning out about one-third of the ag¬ 
gregate production of all the States. 
Massachusetts also takes the lead in 
bleaching, boots and shoes, (producing 
nearly one-half of all made in the 
country), baskets, brushes, cordage, 
cutlery, (over one-half), chairs, spin¬ 
ning and weaving machinery, fish oils, 
paper, and photography, preserves and 
sauces, sails, straw goods, wearing ap¬ 
parel, wire and woolen goods. 

New York heads the list in the 
manufacture of artificial limbs, awn¬ 
ings and tents, bellows, leather belting, 
billiard tables, book-binding, cigars, 
cheese, paper and packing boxes, 
brooms, carriages, cider, coffee, coffins, 
paper collars, confectionery, cooperage, 
dye-woods, engraving, files, refrigera¬ 
tors, furs, gas, gloves, grease, hair- 
work, hats and caps, hoopskirts, 
corsets, wheels, stoves, jewelry, leather, 
malt liquors, picture frames, malt 
matches, millinery, tobacco-pipes, 
pocket-books, printing, pumps, regalia, 
safes, sugar, tin, copper, and sheet iron 
ware, tobacco, type, upholstery, vaiv 
nish, vinegar and wire work. 

Pennsylvania claims pre-eminence ir. 
the matter of blacking, brass found 
ing, brick, rag carpets, cars, coke, char, 
coal, chromos, coal oil, drugs, fireworks, 
stained glass, glassware, glue, iron and 











THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


its manufacture, lime, lumber, general 
machinery, steam boilers, lead and 
zinc paints, patent medicines, per¬ 
fumery, roofing materials, saws, steel, 
stereotyping and electrotyping, um¬ 
brellas and canes, whips and turned 
and carved wood. 

Connecticut stands at the head in 
bells, firearms, gunpowder, hardware, 
plated ware, spectacles, and one or two 
other articles which constitute sub¬ 
divisions of general heads. 

New Jersey leads off in artificial 
building stone, saddlery hardware, 
japanned ware, kaline and ground 
earths, trunks, valises and satchels. 

Illinois is at the head in butchering 
and in distilling liquors. It also ex¬ 
ceeds in the production of paper bags 
and packed pork. 

Ohio makes the most boats, produces 
the most dressed flax, and turns out 
the most wooden ware. 

One or two other States are men¬ 
tioned as pre-eminent in some two or 
or three articles of minor importance, 
but the above embrace the leading 
facts of interest to be gathered from 
the tables. 


HISTORY OF COFFEE. 

Coffee was originally known by the 
name of Kaulii. Although the plant 
or tree is indigenous to Southern Abys¬ 
sinia, where it is even to the present 
day cultivated, yet it derived its name 
from Kaffa in Eastern Africa, where 
the plant also grows wild and very 
abundantly. The Malays, who from 
their intercourse with the Arabs, have 
long known the berry, call it by the 
Arabian name Kawah; the Japanese, 
however, in common with ourselves, 
designate it coffee. There is an East¬ 
ern legend, which ascribes the discov¬ 
ery of the berry to a Dervish, named 


227 


Hadji Omer, who, in the year 1285, 
being driven out of Mocha, was induced 
in the extremity of hunger, to roast 
the berries which grew near his hid¬ 
ing place. He ate them as the only 
means of sustaining life ; and steeping 
the roasted berries in water to quench 
his thirst, he thus discovered their 
agreeable qualities, and also that the 
infusion was nearly equal to solid food. 
His persecutors, who had intended that 
he should die of starvation, regarded 
his preservation as a miracle. Accord¬ 
ing to the manuscript of an Arabian 
scribe of the ninth century of the He¬ 
gira, or the fifteenth of the Christian 
era, (which manuscript is, or was, in 
the great library of the city of Paris), 
we learn that a certain Mufti or High 
Priest named Genial Eddin, of Aden, 
a town of Arabia Felix, was the first 
who introduced to his countrymen the 
custom of coffee-drinking. Having 
returned from Persia, where he had ob¬ 
served the beverage used as a medicine, 
and being at the time, himself, sick, he 
tried, as an experiment, a dose of the 
“black draught.’ 1 

Finding it both curative and exhil¬ 
arating, he forthwith turned his dis¬ 
covery to a good account by applying 
its virtues as an antidote to the torpor 
and drowsiness of his monks, whom he 
had often found dormant at their de¬ 
votions. Coffee, which had been in use 
in Ethiopia, it is believed from time 
immemorial, was carried by the Der¬ 
vishes to Mecca, where the beverage 
became very popular. It continued 
its career through Syria, and in 1554 
became the favorite drink at Constan¬ 
tinople, where, soon after, coffee houses 
were opened. From the “City of the 
Sultan,” it passed to Western Europe, 
but at what precise time historians 
have not positively determined. It is 
believed to have been introduced into 








228 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Venice about the year 1615. In 1644, 
it was known at Marseilles, some of 
the coffee beans having been taken 
there from Constantinople, with ves¬ 
sels and an apparatus for making the 
beverage. The traveler Thevenot was 
among the first to introduce into Paris 
the custom of taking coffee after din¬ 
ner. He had but few imitators until 
ten years after, about 1668, when the 
coffee parties of the Turkish Embassa¬ 
dor at Paris brought the beverage into 
fashion. Coffee was first regularly 
introduced into England about the 
middle of the seventeenth century, as 
we learn from the following extract 
from Sir Henry Blount, who visited 
Turkey in 1634: 

u The Turks have a drink,” he 
writes, “ called Cauphe, made of a ber¬ 
ry as big as a small bean, dried in 
a furnace and beat to a powder of a 
sooty color, in taste a little bitterish, 
that they seethe and drink hot as may 
be endured.” Notwithstanding the op¬ 
position and prejudice which prevailed 
against the beverage for nearly a score 
of years after its ini roduction, the cof¬ 
fee houses continued to increase in 
London and other large cities in En¬ 
gland. The English and French dis¬ 
pute the honor of introducing coffee 
into Western Europe. Coffee was not 
used in Rome until long after it had 
been known to and tasted by Italian 
travelers at Constantinople; but the 
Church, however, looked with favor 
upon a beverage, one effect of which, 
was to keep both priests and people 
awake. The first use of coffee in En¬ 
gland, was known in 1657. An ani¬ 
mated controversy was kept up about 
coffee during the sixteenth and seven¬ 
teenth centuries. In spite of opposi¬ 
tion, coffee soon became a favorite 
drink, and the shops where it was sold, 
places of general resort. 


Coffee, a cinchonaceous genus, con¬ 
sisting of many species of tropical ber¬ 
ry-bearing shrubs, one of which, Coffaea 
Arabiccij the only one which is culti¬ 
vated, is a native of Upper Ethiopia 
and Arabia Felix. This is the parent 
of the plants from whose crushed ber¬ 
ries we derive that aromatic drink 
called coffee. This albuminous sub¬ 
stance — the coffee of commerce — is to 
that plant what the flour is to corn, 
the white meat to a eocoanut, and the 
aromatic substance to the nutmeg. Its 
flower consists of one funnel-shaped 
petal with a slender tube. It is de¬ 
scribed botanically as an ever-green 
shrub having oval shining sharp-point¬ 
ed leaves, white, fragrant, five-cleft 
clustered corollas, with projecting an¬ 
thers and oblong pulpy berries, which 
are at first of a bright red color but 
afterwards become purple. The dark- 
green leaves shining brilliantly in the 
sun afford a beautiful contrast to the 
white jessamine-like blossoms. Its 
leaves resemble those of the common 
laurel, although not so dry and thick. 
From the angle of the leaf-stocks small 
groups of the white flowers issue. 
These flowers fade very soon, and are 
replaced by a kind of fruit not unlike 
a cherry, which contains a yellow fluid 
enveloping two small seeds or berries, 
convex upon one side, flat and furrowed 
upon the other. These seeds are of a 
horny nature ; they are glued together, 
each being surrounded with a peculiar 
covering. The period of flowering 
does not last more than two days. In 
a single night the blossoms expand so 
profusely that the trees appear as if 
covered with snow. The seeds are 
known to be ripe when the berries 
have a dark red color. Travelers tell 
us that nothing can be conceived more 
delightful than the appearance and 
perfume of a coffee plantation in full 




THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


229 


bloom. The fruit begins to ripen in 
February. 

It is now an ascertained fact that 
much of the far-famed Mocha coffee is 
produced in East India and shipped to 
Mocha. The excellence of Mocha cof¬ 
fee appears to consist more in the name 
.and method of curing than any other 
cause. The coffee tree would grow to 
the height of fifteen or twenty feet, yet 
it is usually kept down by pruning, to 
that of five feet, for increasing its pro¬ 
ductiveness as well as for the conven¬ 
ience of cropping. It begins to yield 
fruit the third year, but is not gener¬ 
ally in full bearing until the fifth. The 
berries when ripe are picked and spread 
on drying-grounds and are dried with 
the pulp and parchment on the bean. 
When dry the berries are placed under 
wooden rollers or pounded in wooden 
mortars, and the outer skin being thus 
removed, the beans are winnowed, sized 
and packed for market. It should not 
be exposed to sun or wind until the 
parchment cracks, as every hour's ex¬ 
posure to the atmosphere, after that is 
removed, takes away the color and aro¬ 
ma of the bean. For packing, casks 
are preferable to sacks, as coffee has a 
strong attraction for damp and all 
scents, and its aroma will suffer by its 
contact with any substance. There 
are said to be ten varieties of coffee, 
but only one is found indigenous to 
India, and it is questionable if this is 
not the Mocha species introduced from 
Arabia. 


FRENCH COFFEE. 

Gafe-au-lait — that is three parts of 
milk to one of coffee — is, according to 
Dr. Doran, the proper thing for break¬ 
fast, but the addition of milk to that 
taken after dinner, is a cruelty to the 
stomach. The u cafe noir” of the 


French, is coffee made strong with 
water only. (< Cafe-auAait” must not 
be made by boiling coffee and milk 
together, as milk is not proper to ex¬ 
tract the essential properties of the 
coffee, and coffee must first be made as 
u cafe noir,” only stronger. As much 
of this coffee is poured into the cup as 
is required, and the cup is then filled 
up with boiled milk. Cafe a la creme is 
made by adding boiled cream to strong, 
clear coffee, and heating them to¬ 
gether. Cafe glace is made by adding 
one egg to every six cups of cafe noir, 
sweeten and put in cream. When 
thoroughly mixed, place in a proper 
cooler surrounded with ice. It should 
be frozen to the consistency of rich 
thick cream, and if properly made, will 
be found a delicious and refreshing 
draught. 


MEERSCHAUM PIPES. 

The clay of which these are made is 
procured chiefly in Asia Minor, and 
also in Spain, Greece and Moravia. 
The manufacture of pipes from the 
clay is carried on with special care at 
Vienna and Pestli. The meerschaum 
is soaked in a liquefied composition of 
wax, oil and fat, the absorption of 
which occasions the colors assumed by 
the pipe after smoking. Occasionally 
the bowls are artificially stained by 
dipping them in a solution of copperas 
and other substances, before the appli¬ 
cation of the wax composition. The 
carving of the bowls is often difficult 
work, owing to the occurrence of a 
kind of clay mixed up with and harder 
than the meerschaum ; and the large 
quantity of parings left in roughing 
out the bowls would entail considera¬ 
ble loss unless some process had been 
devised for using them. This has been 
done, and the parings are employed in 









230 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


making the kind of meerschaum howls 
called massa-bowls. The parings are 
ground to a fine powder, boiled in 
water, and moulded into blocks, with 
or without the addition of clay. The 
blocks are allowed to dr} r , and then 
a pipe bowl is fashioned from each. 
These bowls are distinguished from 
the real meerschaum chiefly by being 
rather heavier. 

Meerschaum bowls have been pro¬ 
duced so large and so elaborately carved 
as to be valued at five hundred dollars 
each. 


HOW POSTAGE STAMPS ARE MADE. 

In printing, steel plates are used, on 
which two hundred stamps are en¬ 
graved. Two men are kept hard at 
work covering them with colored inks 
and passing them to a man and girl, 
who are equally busy in printing them 
with large rolling hand presses. Three 
of these little squibs are employed all 
the time, although ten presses can be 
put into use in case of necessity. After 
the small sheet of paper upon which 
the two hundred stamps are printed 
have dried enough, they are sent to 
another room and gummed. The 
paste is made from clear starch, or 
rather its dextrine, which is acted upon 
chemically and then boiled, forming a 
clear, smooth, slightly sweet mixture, 
which is better than any other mate¬ 
rial, for instance, gum arabic, which 
cracks the paper badly. This paper is 
also of a peculiar texture, somewhat 
similar to that used for bank notes. 
Each sheet of stamps is taken separate¬ 
ly, placed upon a flat board, and its 
edges covered with a light metal frame. 
Then the paste is smeared on with a 
large whitewash brush, and the sheet 
is laid between two wire racks and 
placed on a pile with others to dry. 


They are dried by fans which are 
operated by steam power, and when 
perfectly dry, the sheets are placed 
between sheets of pasteboard and 
pressed in hydraulic presses, capable of 
applying a weight of five thousand 
tons. 

In the manufacture of the paste 
great care is taken to render it perfect¬ 
ly harmless, as has been conclusively 
proved by analysis made by eminent 
chemists. The method of applying 
stamps to the envelope by moistening 
with the tongue, renders this chemical 
caution against the presence of any 
poisonous or noxious ingredients in 
the paste, an absolute necessity. After 
the pressing follows more counting — 
in fact, stamps are counted no less 
than thirteen times during the process 
of manufacture. The sheets are then 
cut in half, each portion containing 
one hundred stamps — this being done 
by girls with ordinary hand shears, 
cutting by hand being preferred to that 
of machinery, which method would 
destroy too many stamps. They are 
then passed to two other squibs, which, 
in as many operations, perforate the 
sheets between the stamps. The per¬ 
foration is done by machinery, and is 
first made in a perpendicular, and then 
crossed in a horizontal line. Another 
pressing follows — this time to get rid 
of the raised edges on the backs of the 
stamps made by the dies, and this ends 
the manufacture. A separate apart¬ 
ment is devoted to the packing and 
sending off the stamps to the different 
offices. If a single stamp is torn, or 
in any way mutilated, the whole sheet 
of one hundred is burned. About five 
hundred thousand are burned every 
week from this cause. For the past 
twenty years not a single sheet has 
been lost, such care has been taken in 
counting them. 








231 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


WHAT IS FROST 2 


We have learned that dew is the 
floating moisture of the air gently 
floating down upon the grass and 
leaves of plants, which have become 
colder than itself. If, now, the grass 
and leaves become still colder, as they 
will do on an Autumn or Winter 
night, the tiny particles of vapor, 
which in Summer would make dew, 
are frozen as soon as they fall, and ap¬ 
pear on the grass like little bristling 
needles of ice. This we call frost. It 
does not take the form of a smooth 
layer of ice all over the blades of grass, 
because it is the nature of water, when 
freezing, to take a regular form to 
crystalize. Whenever water freezes, 
little needles of ice are first seen to 
shoot out upon its surface, which 
make the same angles with each other 
all over the world. So it is in our 
houses, the moisture of the air in our 
rooms touches the cold glass, and, try¬ 
ing to crystalize, makes the curious 
frost work on our windows every cold 
morning in Winter. 

A singular appearance is sometimes 
noticed on the rocks by the road-side 
and on the brick walls of houses, when 
in Winter there is a sudden change 
from cold weather to warm. As the 
stones and bricks are still freezing 
cold after the air has become warm, 
they condense and freeze the moisture 
of the air, and array themselves in a 
snow-white garment of frost. Schol¬ 
ars in school are often troubled on 
Winter mornings by “the frost com¬ 
ing out of their slates,” as they call 
it. The slates are so wet that the 
pencil marks cannot be seen. This 
moisture on the slate, like the frost 
on the brick wall, is caused, not by 
frost, or anything else, coming out of 
them, but rather by the heat of the 


air going into them. This leaves the 
vapor of the air to settle upon them 
in the shape of dew or frost. 

A large collection of frost is often 
seen upon the heads of nails, while no 
frost appears on the wood around the 
nails. It is the nature of iron to 
receive heat from any warm substance 
much faster than the wood does. So 
the air which touches the nail quickly 
gives up its heat to the nail, and lays 
down its moisture upon it to freeze; 
while the wood, although equally cold, 
being able to take only a little heat 
away from the air, remains quite free 
from frost. 


MAY AND WIFE. 

Thomas Jefferson wrote the follow¬ 
ing excellent advice. There is much 
human nature and good sense in it: 

Harmony in a married state is the 
very first thing to be aimed at. Noth¬ 
ing can preserve affection uninterrupt¬ 
ed but a firm resolution never to differ 
in will, and the determination of each 
to consider the love of the other of 
more value than any other earthly 
object whatever on which a wish can 
be fixed. How light, in fact, is the 
sacrifice of any wish when weighed 
against the affection of one with whom 
we are to pass our life. Opposition in 
a single instance will hardly of itself 
produce alienation; this only takes 
place when all the oppositions are put, 
as it were, in a pouch, which, while it 
is filling, the alienation is insensibly 
going on, and when full it is complete. 
It would puzzle either to say why, be¬ 
cause no one difference of opinion has 
been marked enough to produce a seri¬ 
ous effect itself. The affections are 
wearied out by a constant stream of 
little obstacles. Other sources of its 
discontent, very common, indeed, are 











THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


9Q0 

/v 


the little purpose of husband and wife 
in common conversation — a disposi¬ 
tion in either to criticise and question 
what the other says — a desire always 
to demonstrate and make the other feel 
in the wrong, especially in company. 
Nothing is so goading. Much better, 
therefore, if our companion views a 
thing in a different light from what 
we do, leave him in the quiet possession 
of his views. What is the use of recti¬ 
fying him if the thing be unimportant ? 
Let it pass for the present and wait a 
softer moment and conciliatory occa¬ 
sion of reviewing the subject together. 
It is wonderful how many persons are 
rendered unhappy by inattention to 
the little rule of prudence. 


THE DISTANCE OF A STAR FROM 
THE EARTH. 


For many ages this question puzzled 
astronomers: How far off are the 
stars ? It was known that their dis¬ 
tance was great, very great. It was 
known that they were immeasurably 
farther off than the sun, moon, or any 
of the planets; but it is only in the 
present century that the question has 
been even partially answered. 

Of the countless thousands of stars 
which stud the universe, the distance 
of perhaps about twenty has been de¬ 
termined. Others which have been 
tried have defied the powers of the 
most skillful astronomers, aided by the 
most elaborate instruments ; their dis¬ 
tances are too great to allow of meas¬ 
urement, while the rest of the vast 
host which stud our firmament have 
not yet been examined with this ob¬ 
ject. 

The inquiry is one of the most deli¬ 
cate and subtle of any which can 
engage the attention of an astronomer. 
It is impossible to explain here the 


manner in which it is conducted ; we 
must endeavor, rather, to realize the 
result which has rewarded these suc- 
essful labors. There is a beautiful 
star in the Southern Hemisphere, the 
brightest in the constellation Centaur, 
one of the most brilliant stars in the 
heavens. This was diligently observed 
by the skillful astronomer who man¬ 
aged the observatory at the Cape of 
Good Hope in the years 1832 and 1833. 
He found, as the result of his labors, 
that the distance of this star — Alpha 
Centauri, as it is called — is twenty 
billions of miles. 

It requires a little consideration to 
estimate what the words twenty bill¬ 
ions of miles really mean. A billion 
contains one million millions, and we 
shall endeavor to convey an idea of 
this amount by a few simple illustra¬ 
tions. Supposing that our great fore¬ 
father, Adam, had commenced to count 
as quickly as he could, and that when 
his life was ended his son had com¬ 
menced to count, taking up from the 
number at which Adam left off, and 
spent his whole life, day and night, 
counting as fast as he could, and sup¬ 
posing that at his death he enjoined 
on his heirs an eternity of counting, 
and that they had continued doing so 
up to the present moment, their united 
efforts would not yet have reached the 
amount of a quarter of a billion; and 
yet the distance of the star is twenty 
billions of miles. 

Another illustration may be given 
to convey an idea of this vast distance. 
If we were to take a sum equal to five 
times our national debt, and were to 
expend this in postage stamps, we 
should get one billion of them ; and if 
we were to draw a line around London, 
including every house in the suburbs, 
and then take an area equal in size to 
this, cleared and arranged for the pur- 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


233 


pose; if we then commenced to stick 
them side by side over the entire area 
oi London, we should not be able to 
get them all in. After we had covered 
every inch of surface over completely, 
there would be countless thousands 
still remaining. 

Such, then, is the distance of the 
nearest fixed star. We cannot grasp 
it in our imagination, nor are we more 
successful if we try to make a map. 
Suppose we proceed by first laying 
down the sun, and then placing the 
earth one inch distant from it. If we 
inquire at what distance the nearest 
star should be placed, using the same 
scale, we find it to be eleven miles. 
Such a map is, therefore, simply an 
impossibility. 

Knowing, however, the distance of 
the nearest star, what can we say of 
the distance of the farthest of those 
that are visible ? Here precise knowl¬ 
edge fails us. We can, indeed, grope 
after the truth, and make guesses of a 
greater or less probability. We believe 
that it is, at all events, some hundreds 
of times as great as the astounding 
magnitude of which we have endeav¬ 
ored to convey an impression ; but the 
human mind becomes bewildered in 
Attempting to realize the immensity. 


PRESERVING LEAVES. 


A new way of preserving autumn 
leaves is as follows: Iron them fresh 
with a warm (not hot) iron, on which 
some spermaceti has been lightly rub¬ 
bed. This method preserves perfectly 
their lovely tints, and gives a waxy 
gloss which no other process secures. 
The method is very rapid and very 
agreeable, and no lady who has ever 
tried the tedious and uncertain experi¬ 
ment of pressing will ever again resort 
to it, after trying this new better way. 


THE BOOMERANG. 


Civilized folks are superior in so 
very many respects to their barbarous 
brethren that it is well, when we can 
discover anything which a savage can 
do better than we can, to make a note 
of it and give the subject some atten¬ 
tion. 

And it is certain that there are 
savages who can surpass us in one 
particular — they can make and throw 
boomerangs. 

It is very possible that an American 
mechanic could imitate an Australian 
boomerang, so that few persons could 
tell the difference; but we do not 
believe that boomerang would work 
properly. Either in the quality of the 
wood, or in the seasoning, or in some 
particular which we would not be apt 
to notice, it would, in all probability, 
differ very much from the weapon 
carved out by the savage. If the 
American mechanic was to throw his 
boomerang away from him, we think 
it would stay away. There is no rea¬ 
son to believe that it would ever come 
back. 

And yet there is nothing at all worn 
derful in the appearance of the real 
boomerang. It is simply a bent club, 
about two feet long, smooth on one 
side and slightly hollowed out on the 
other. No one would imagine, merely 
from looking at it, that it could be¬ 
have in any way differently from any 
other piece of stick of its size and 
weight. 

But it does behave differently, at 
least when an Australian savage 
throws it. We have never heard of 
an American or European who was 
able to make the boomerang perform 
the tricks for which it has become 
famous. Throwing this weapon is 
like piano-playing — you have to be 








234 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


brought up to it in order to do it well. 
In the hands of the natives of Aus¬ 
tralia, however, the boomerang per¬ 
forms most wonderful feats. Some¬ 
times the savage takes hold of it by 
one end, and gives it a sort of careless 
jerk, so that it falls on the ground a 
short distance from him. As soon as 
it strikes the earth it bounds up into 
the air, turns, twists and pitches about 
in every direction, knocking with 
great force against everything in its 
way. It is said that when it bounds in 
this way into the midst of a flock of 
birds, it kills and wounds great numbers 
of them. At other times the boome¬ 
rang thrower will hurl his weapon at an 
object at a great distance, and when it 
has struck the mark it will turn and 
fall at the feet of its owner, turning 
and twisting on its swift and crooked 
way. The boomerang will go around 
a tree and return again to the thrower. 

Most astonishing stories are told of 
the skill with which the Australians 
use this weapon. They will aim at 
birds or small animals that are hidden 
behind trees and rocks, the boomerang 
will go around the trees and rocks and 
kill the game. They are the only peo¬ 
ple who can with any certainty shoot 
around a corner. Not only do they 
throw the boomerang with unerring 
accuracy, but with tremendous force, 
and when it hits a man on the head, 
giving him two or three terrible raps 
as it twists about him, it is very apt 
to kill him. To ward off these danger¬ 
ous blows, the natives generally carry 
shields when they go out to fight. 
Sometimes the Australian throws two 
boomerangs at once, one with his right 
hand and one with his left, and then 
the unfortunate man he aims at has a 
hard time of it. 

Many persons nave endeavored to 
explain the peculiar turning and twist¬ 


ing properties of the boomerang, but 
they have not been entirely successful, 
for so much depends, not only on the 
form of the weapon, but on the skill 
of the thrower. But it is known that 
the form of the boomerang, and the 
fact that one of its limbs is longer and 
heavier than the other, gives its center 
of gravity a very peculiar situation; 
and when the weapon is thrown by 
one end, it has naturally a tendency to 
rotate, and the manner of this rotation 
is determined by the peculiar impetus 
given it by the hand of the man who 
throws it. 

It is well we are able to explain the 
boomerang a little, for that is all we 
can do with it. The savage can not 
explain it at all; but he can use it. 

Naval architects have attempted to 
apply the principle of the boomerang 
to screw steamships, but so far the idea 
has not found favor with ship builders. 


HUNGARY WATER. 

This perfumed liquid is said to take 
its name from one of the Queens of 
Hungary, who is reported to have de¬ 
rived great benefit from a bath con¬ 
taining it, at the age of seventy-five. 
It is composed thus: — Rectified alco¬ 
hol, one quart; oil of English rosemary, 
half an ounce; oil of lemon peel, and 
oil of balm (melissa), of each a quarter 
of an ounce ; oil of mint, seven drops ; 
spiritous essence of rose, and spiritous 
essence of orange flowers, of each a 
quarter pint. After being well mixed 
it is ready for use. 

It will be seen that rosemary is the 
leading ingredient in the above recipe. 
There is no doubt that clergymen and 
orators, while speaking for a long time, 
would derive great benefit from per¬ 
fuming their handkerchiefs with Hun¬ 
gary water, or eau de Cologne, as the 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


235 


rosemary they contain excites the mind 
to vigorous action, sufficient of the 
stimulant being inhaled bj- occasionally 
wiping the face with a handkerchief 
wetted with these “waters.” Some 
such property of rosemary was evi¬ 
dently known to Shakspeare, who says, 
“There’s rosemary, that’s for remem¬ 
brance.” Now the poet giving us the 
key, we can understand how it is that 
perfumes containing rosemary are so 
universally said to he “ so refreshing.” 


A BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENT. 


The following beautiful chemical ex¬ 
periment may be easily performed by 
a lady to the great astonishment of a 
circle at a tea party: Take two or, 
three leaves of red cabbage, cut them 
into small bits, put them into a basin, 
and pour a pint of boiling water on 
them; let it stand an hour; then 
pour it off into a decanter. It will 
be a fine blue color. Then take four 
wine glasses; into one put six drops 
of strong vinegar; into another six 
drops of solution of soda; into the 
third, a solution of alum, and let the 
fourth remain empty. The glasses 
may be prepared sometime before, and 
the few drops of colorless liquid that 
has been placed in them will not be 
noticed. Fill up the glasses from the 
decanter, and the liquid poured into 
the glass containing the acid will be¬ 
come a beautiful red; the glass con¬ 
taining the soda will become a fine 
green; that poured into the empty 
one will remain unchanged. By add¬ 
ing a little vinegar to the green it will 
immediately change to red, and on add¬ 
ing a little solution of soda to the red, 
it will assume a fine green, thus show¬ 
ing the action of acids and alkalies on 
vegetable blues. 


OLD PLOWS. 


A plow used by the Emperor Joseph 
II. of Austria, in 1769, was placed be¬ 
side a modern plow, in a portion of the 
Austrian department in the Vienna 
Exposition, set apart for the exhibition 
of the old plows of the various nations. 
No better proof could be given of the 
great advance in the improvement of 
plows which has marked the one hun¬ 
dred years which have elapsed since his 
Imperial Majesty worried himself and 
his mother earth with that plow. 

This venerable plow was composed 
of the root of a tree, with the stem for 
a beam, resting on an axle with wheels 
underneath it of about two and a half 
feet in diameter; the handles were se¬ 
cured to the knee by holes bored into 
it into which the handles were secured; 
the share was a piece of iron about nine 
inches long secured to the point by the 
knee, and then a strip of board about 
six inches wide was secured near the 
share. This last contrivance was de¬ 
signed to answer the purpose of a 
mould-board. 

The old English plows, though much 
in advance of this Austrian one, were 
very awkward and weighty affairs, such 
as now would not be accepted as a gift 
by farmers in any civilized country. 
Spain exhibited an old plow with shafts 
and a wooden share. South France, a 
plow constructed of wood, with the 
exception of the share, with wooden 
mould-board five inches wide. This 
plow was about five hundred years old. 


TO MEASURE A TREE. 

Walk from the tree, looking at it 
from time to time between your knees. 
When you are able to see the top of 
a tree in this way, your distance from 
the root of the tree equals its height. 










236 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


WATCH SPRINGS. 


Watch springs are hammered out 
of round steel wire, of suitable diame¬ 
ter, until they fill the gage for width, 
which, at the same time, insures equal¬ 
ity of thickness ; the holes are punched 
in their extremities, and they are 
trimmed on the edge with a smooth 
file ; the springs are then tied up with 
a binding wire, in a loose, open coil, 
and heated over a charcoal fire upon 
a perforated revolving plate, and are 
hardened in oil, and blazed off. 

The spring is now distended in a 
long metal frame, similar to that used 
for a saw blade, and ground and pol¬ 
ished with emery and oil, between lead 
blocks; by this time its elasticity 
appears quite lost, and it may be bent 
in any direction ; its elasticity is, how¬ 
ever, entirely restored by a subsequent 
hammering on a very bright anvil, 
which “ puts the nature into the 
springs.” 

The coloring is done over a flat 
plate of iron, or hood, under which a 
little spirit lamp is kept burning ; the 
spring is continually drawn backward 
and forward, about two or three 
inches at a time, until it assumes the 
orange or deep blue tint throughout, 
according to the taste of the pur¬ 
chaser ; by many the coloring is con¬ 
sidered to be a matter of ornament, 
and not essential. The last process is 
to coil the spring into the spiral form, 
that it may enter the barrel in which 
it is to be contained ; this is done by 
a tool with a small axis and winch 
handle, and does not require heat. 

The balance springs of marine chro¬ 
nometers, which are in the form of 
a screw, are wound into the square 
thread of a screw of the appropriate 
diameter and coarseness ; the two ends 
of the spring are retained by side 


screws, and the whole is carefully en¬ 
veloped in platinum foil, and tightly 
bound with wire. The mass is next 
heated in a piece of gun barrel, closed 
at one end, and plunged into oil, 
which hardens the spring almost with¬ 
out discoloring it, owing to the exclu¬ 
sion of the air by the close platinum 
covering, which is now removed, and 
the spring is let dowr to the blue 
before removal from the screwed block. 

The balance springs of common 
watches are frequently left soft ; those 
of the best watches are hardened in 
the coil, upon a plain cylinder, and are 
then curled in the spiral form between 
the edge of a blunt knife and the 
thumb, the same as in curling up a 
narrow ribbon of paper, or the fila¬ 
ments of an ostrich feather. 


HAND SHAKING. 

How did people get in the habit of 
shaking hands ? The answer is not far 
to seek. In early and barbarous times, 
when every savage or semi-savage was 
his own law-giver, judge, soldier and 
policeman, and had to watch over his 
own safety, in default of all other pro¬ 
tection, two friends or acquaintances, 
or two strangers desiring to be friends 
or acquaintances, when they chanced to 
meet, offered to each other the right 
hand alike of offense and defense — the 
hand that wields the sword, the dag¬ 
ger, the club, the tomahawk, or other 
weapon of war. Each did this to 
show that the hand was empty, and 
neither war nor treachery was intend¬ 
ed. A man cannot stab another while 
in the act of shaking hands with him, 
unless he is a double-dyed traitor and 
villain, and tries to aim a cowardly 
blow with the left while giving the 
right, and pretending to be on good 
terms with his victim. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


237 


The custom of hand shaking prevails 
more or less among all civilized nations, 
and is the tacit avowal of friendship 
and good will, just as a kiss is of a 
warmer passion. Ladies, as every one 
must have remarked, seldom or never 
shake hands with the cordiality of gen¬ 
tlemen, unless it be with each other. 
The reason is obvious. It is for them 
to receive homage, not to give it. They 
cannot be expected to show to persons 
of the other sex a warmth of greeting 
which might be misinterpreted, unless 
such persons are very closely related to 
them by family or affection, in which 
cases hand shaking is not needed, and 
the lips do more agreeable duty. Every 
man shakes hands according to his na¬ 
ture, whether it be timid or aggressive, 
proud or humble, courteous or churlish, 
refined or vulgar, sincere or hypocrit¬ 
ical, enthusiastic or indifferent. 

The nicest refinement and idiosyn¬ 
crasies of character may not be discov¬ 
erable in this fashion, but the salient 
points of temperament and individual¬ 
ity may doubtless be made clear to the 
understanding of most people by a bet¬ 
ter study of what may be called the 
physiology of hand shaking. To pre¬ 
sent the left hand for the purpose of a 
friendly greeting is a mark of discour¬ 
tesy— sometimes intentional on the 
part of superiors in rank to their infe¬ 
riors, and an act that no true gentle¬ 
man will commit. There is no reason 
why it should be considered more dis¬ 
courteous than it would be to kiss the 
left cheek instead of the right; but 
doubtless the custom that makes the 
right hand imperative in all sincere 
salutations dates from those early times 
when hand shaking first began, and the 
hand that was shaken in friendship was 
of necessity weaponless. 

Clocks were first made in England. 


SOMETHING ABOUT LACE. 


Large quantities of rich old lace 
were lost in the last century, when the 
French Revolution brought in gauzes 
and blondes, and fashion tossed aside 
as worthless these exquisite products 
of the needle. In Italy, where the cus¬ 
tom was to preserve old family lace, 
less was destroyed; but in England it 
was handed over to servants or farm 
people, or stowed away in attics, and 
afterward burned. Some ladies gave 
point laces, which now they could not 
afford to buy, to their children to dress 
their dolls with. Sometimes it was 
thrown away as old rags. It is impos¬ 
sible to exaggerate the extent to which 
lace was used piior to the French Rev¬ 
olution, or the immense extravagance 
of the sums spent on it. Everybody 
wore it, even servants emulating their 
masters and mistresses. It trimmed 
everything, from the towering Fon- 
tanges, which rose like steeples from 
ladies 1 heads, to the boot-tops and shoe- 
rosettes of men. Men wore lace ruffles 
not only at the wrist, but at the knee ; 
lace ruffs, cravats, collars, and garters; 
and bed furniture was made of lace, 
or trimmed with it, costly as it was. 
A pair of ruffles would amount to 
4,000 livres, a lady’s cap to 1,200 
livres. We read that Mine, du Barry 
gave 487 francs for lace enough to trim 
a pillow-case, and 77 livres for a pair 
of ruffles. Lace fans were made in 
1668, and lace-trimmed bouquet-hold¬ 
ers are not a new fancy. When the 
Doge of Venice made his annual visit 
to the convent Delle Vergini, the lady 
abbess used to meet him in the parlor, 
surrounded by her novices, and present 
him with a ncsegay in a gold handle 
trimmed with the richest lace that 
could be found in Venice. Lace has 
frequently employed the thoughts of 






238 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


law-makers, and in 1698 was the sub¬ 
ject of a legislative duel between En¬ 
gland and Flanders. There was already 
in England an act prohibiting the im¬ 
portation of bone-lace, (i. e., bobbin- 
lace), loom-lace, cut-v* rk, and needle¬ 
work point, but this proving ineffectual, 
since everybody smuggled, another act 
was passed setting a penalty of twenty 
shillings a yard and forfeiture. We 
regret to learn that forfeiture meant, 
in some cases at least, burning, and 
that large quantities of the finest Flan¬ 
ders lace were seized and actually 
burned. It reminds one of the burn¬ 
ing of Don Quixote’s library of chiv- 
alric records. Flanders, however, with 
its nunneries full of lace-makers, and 
its thousands of people depending on 
the trade, had no mind to be thus crip¬ 
pled without retaliation. An act was 
immediately passed prohibiting the 
importation of English wool; where¬ 
upon the wool-staplers echoed with 
addition the groans of the lace-makers, 
and England was forced to repeal the 
act so far as the Low Countries were 
concerned. 

As we have said, everybody in En¬ 
gland smuggled lace in those days. 
Smuggling seems, indeed, to be every¬ 
where looked on as the least shameful 
of law-breaking. But never, perhaps, 
were officers of the customs as incor¬ 
ruptible as these. Suspicious persons 
were searched, no matter what their 
rank, and no person living within 
miles of a seaport dared to wear a bit 
of foreign lace unless they could prove 
that it had been honestly obtained. 
Many were the devices by which men 
and women sought to elude the cus¬ 
toms. When a deceased clergyman of 
the English church was conveyed home 
from the Low Countries for burial, it 
was found that only his head, hands, 
and feet were in the coffin — the body 


had been replaced by Flanders lace of 
immense value. Years after, when the 
body of his Grace the Duke of Devon¬ 
shire, who had died in France, was 
brought over, the custom-house officers 
not only searched the coffin, but poked 
the corpse with a stick to make sure 
that it was a body. The High Sheriff 
of Westminster was more fortunate, 
for he succeeded in smuggling £6,000 
worth of lace in the coffin that brought 
over from Calais the body of Bishop 
Atterbury. In the present century, 
Lady Ellenborough, the wife of the 
Lord Chief-Justice, was stopped near 
Dover, and a large quantity of valuable 
lace found secreted in the lining of her 
carriage. 

At one period much lace was smug¬ 
gled into France from Belgium by 
means of dogs trained for the purpose. 
A dog was caressed and petted at home, 
then, after a while, sent across the 
frontier, where he was tied up, starved, 
and ill-treated. The skin of a larger 
dog was then fitted to his body, the 
intervening space filled with lace, and 
the poor animal released. Of course 
he made haste to scamper back to his 
former home. 

The camp, too, as well as the church 
and the court, has cherished lace, and 
the warriors of those days did not fight 
less gallantly because they went into 
battle elegantly arrayed. 

A graceful fashion called the Stein- 
kerk had a martial origin, and was 
named from the battle so called, where ¬ 
in Marshal Luxembourg won the day 
against William of Orange. On that 
day the young princes of the blood 
were suddenly and unexpectedly called 
into battle. Hastily knotting about 
their necks the laced cravats then in 
fashion, and usually tied with great 
nicety, they rushed into action, and 
won the fight. 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


239 


In honor of that event, both ladies 
and gentlemen wore their cravats and 
scarfs loosely twisted and knotted, the 
ends sometimes tucked through the 
button-hole, sometimes confined by a 
large oval-shaped brooch, and Stein- 
kerks became the rage. 

Dr. Johnson condescended to define 
net lace in his most Johnsonian man¬ 
ner. It is, he says, “ anything reticu¬ 
lated or decussated, with interstices 
between the intersections.” After 
that, ladies may wear their ruffles not 
only with pleasure, but with respect; 
for if he was so learned in defining 
plain net, what unimaginable erudition 
would have entered his definition of 
Honiton guipure, or the points of Al- 
'encon, Brussels, or Venice ! 

The earlier rich laces were not made 
of white thread. Gold, silver and silk 
were used. The Italians, who claim 
to have invented point lace, were the 
great makers of gold lace. Cyprus 
stretched gold into a wire, and wove it. 
From Cyprus the art reached Genoa, 
Venice and Milan ; and gradually all 
Europe learned to make gold lace. In 
England, the complaint was raised 
that the gold of the realm was sensibly 
diminishing in this way, and in 1635 
an act was passed prohibiting the 
melting down of bullion to make gold 
or silver “purl.” And not only in 
Western and Southern Europe was 
this luxury fashionable. A piece of 
gold lace was found in a Scandinavian 
barrow opened in the eighteenth cen¬ 
tury. Perhaps the lace was made by 
some captive woman stolen by the 
vikings, a later Proserpine ravished 
from the South, who wove the web 
with her pale fingers as she sat in that 
frozen Hades, while her piratical blue¬ 
eyed Pluto looked on, marveling, and 
waiting to catch a smile from her re¬ 
lenting e^yes. Gold lace was sold by 


weight. Some of the most magnifi¬ 
cent old points of Venice were made 
of silk, the natural cream color. The 
rose Venice point — Gros point de- 
Venice, Panto a rilievo — was the rich¬ 
est and most complicated of all points. 
It was worked of silk on a parchment 
pattern, the flowers connected by 
brides. The outlines of these flowers 
were in relief, cotton being placed in j 
side to raise them, and countless beau¬ 
tiful stitches were introduced. Sorne^ 
times they were in double, sometimes 
in triple relief, and each flower and 
leaf was edged with fine, regular 
pearls. This point was highly prized 
for albs, collaretts, berthes , and costly 
decorations. Another kind of Venice 
lace — knotted point — had a charm¬ 
ingly romantic origin. A young girl 
in one of the islands of the Lagune, 
a lace-worker, was betrothed to a 
young sailor, who brought her home 
from the Southern seas a bunch of 
pretty coralline, called mermaids 1 lace. 
Moved partly by love for the giver, 
and partly by a warm admiration for 
the graceful nature of the sea-weed, 
with its small white knots united by 
a bride , the girl tried to imitate it 
with her needle, and, after several un¬ 
successful efforts, produced a delicate 
guipure, which soon was admired all 
over Europe. In the sixteenth cen¬ 
tury, Barbara Uttman invented pillow- 
net, a great advance in the making of 
lace. This lady’s father had moved 
from Nuremberg to the Hartz Moun¬ 
tains, to superintend mines there, and 
there the daughter married a rich 
master miner, Christopher Uttnran, 
and lived with him in his castle of 
Annaberg. Seeing the mountain girls 
weave nets for the miners to wear 
over their hair, her inventive mind 
suggested a new and easier way of 
making fine netting. Her repeated 






240 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


failures we know not of, but we know 
of her success. In 1561 she set up a 
workshop in her own name, and this 
branch of industry spread so that soon 
30,000 persons were employed, with a 
revenue of 1,000,000 thalers. In 1575 
the inventress died, and was laid to 
rest in the churchyard of Annaberg, 
where her tombstone records that she 
was “ the benefactress of the Hartz 
Mountains. 17 Pillow-lace, as most peo¬ 
ple know, is made on a round or oval 
board, stuffed so as to form a cushion. 
On this is fixed a stiff piece of parch¬ 
ment with the pattern pricked on it. 
The threads are wound on bobbins 
about the size of a pencil, with a 
groove at the neck. As many of the 
threads as will start well together are 
tied at the ends in a knot, and the 
knot fastened with a pin at the edge 
of the pattern ; then another bunch, 
and so on, till the number required by 
the lace is completed. The lace is 
formed by crossing or intertwining 
these bobbins. 

Hand-made lace is of two kinds, 
point and pillow. Point means a 
needle-work lace made on a parchment 
pattern, also a particular kind of a 
stitch. The word is sometimes incor¬ 
rectly applied ; as, point de Malines } 
point de Valenciennes, both these laces 
being made on a pillow. 

The only name of lace in England 
and France was passement, so called 
because the threads were passed by 
each other in the making. The learned 
derive lace from lacina , a Latin word, 
signifying the hem or fringe of a gar¬ 
ment. Dentelle comes from the little 
toothed edge with which lace was 
finished after awhile. At first it was 
passement dentelle y but finally dentelle. 
The meaning of guipure is hard to 
connect with the present use of the 
word, which is very loose and unde¬ 


fined. It was originally made of silk 
twisted round a little strip of thin 
parchment or vellum ; and silk twisted 
around a thick thread or cord was 
called guipure, hence the name. The 
modern Honiton is called guipure, also 
Maltese lace and its Buckingham imi¬ 
tations. The Italians called the old 
raised points of Venice and Spain 
guipures. It is hard to know what 
claim any of these have to the name. 
A fine silk guipure is made in the 
harems of Turkey, of which speci¬ 
mens were shown in the International 
Exhibition. This point de Turquie is 
but little known, and is costly. It 
mostly represents black, white or 
mixed colors, fruit, flowers, or foliage. 
The lace once made in Malta was a 
coarse kind of Mechlin or Valenciennes 
of one arabesque pattern; but since 
1833, when an English lady induced a 
Maltese woman named Ciglia to copy 
in white an old Greek coverlet, the Cig¬ 
lia family commenced the manufact¬ 
ure of black and white Maltese guip¬ 
ure, till then unknown on the island. 
It is the fineness of the thread which 
renders the real Brussels ground, vrai 
reseau, so costly. The finest is spun 
in dark, underground rooms, for con¬ 
tact with the dry air causes the thread 
to break. The spinner works by feel¬ 
ing rather than sight, though a dark 
paper is placed to throw the thread 
out, and a -single ray of light is ad¬ 
mitted to fall on the work. She 
examines every inch drawn from her 
distaff, and, when any inequality oc¬ 
curs, stops her wheel to repair the 
mischief. The reseau is made in three 
different ways : by hand, on the pil¬ 
low, and more lately by machinery — 
the last a Brussels net made of Scotch 
cotton. The needle-ground costs three 
times as much as the pillow; but it 
is stronger and easier to repair, the 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


241 


pillow-ground always showing the 
join. There are two kinds of flowers : 
those made with the needle, point a 
l aiguille, and those on the pillow, 
point plat. The best flowers are made 
in Brussels itself, where they excel in 
relief {point brode). Each part of 
Brussels lace is made by a different 
hand. One makes the vrai rescan / 
another the footing ; a third the point 
flowers; a fourth works the open 
jours ; a fifth unites the different sec¬ 
tions of the ground together; a sixth 
makes the plat flowers; a seventh 
sews the flowers upon the ground. 
The pattern is designed by the head 
of the fabric, who, having cut the 
parchment into pieces, hands it out 
ready pricked. In the modern lace, 
the work of the needle and pillow are 
combined. Mechlin lace, sometimes 
called br older ie de Malines, is a pillow 
lace made all in one piece, its distin¬ 
guishing feature being a broad, flat 
thread which forms the flower. It is 
very light and transparent, and an¬ 
swers very well as a Summer lace. It 
is said that Napoleon I. admired this 
lace, and that, when he first saw the 
light Gothic tracery of the cathedral 
spire at Antwerp, he exclaimed, “ C’ est 
comme de la dentelle de Malines” 
Valenciennes is also a pillow lace, but 
the ground and gimp, or flower, are 
all made of the same thread. 

The vrai Valenciennes, as it was first 
named, that made in the city itself, 
was made, in the fifteenth century, of 
a three-thread twisted flax, and reached 
its climax about the middle of the 
eighteenth century, when there were 
from 3,000 to 4,000 lace-makers in the 
city alone. Then fashion began to 
prefer the lighter and cheaper fabrics 
of Arras, Lille, and Brussels, till in 
1790 the number of lace-workers had 
diminished to 250. Napoleon I. tried 


unsuccessfully to revive the manufact¬ 
ure, and in 1851 only two lace-makers 
remained, both over 80 }’ears of age. 
This vrai Valenciennes which, from its 
durability, was called les eternelles Val¬ 
enciennes, could not, it was asserted, 
be made outside the walls of the city. 
It was claimed that, if a piece of lace 
were begun at Valenciennes and fin¬ 
ished outside of the walls, that part 
not made in the city Avould be visibly 
less beautiful than the other, though 
continued by the same hand, with the 
same thread, upon the same pillow. 
This was attributed to some peculiarity 
of the atmosphere. That lace, there¬ 
fore, which was made in the neighbor¬ 
hood of the city was called batarde 
and gausse. The makers of this lace 
worked in underground cellars, from 
4 in the morning until 8 at night. 
Young girls were the chief workers, 
great delicacy of touch being required, 
any other kind of work spoiling the 
hand for this. Many of the women, 
we are told, became blind before reach¬ 
ing the age of 30. So great was the 
labor of making this lace that, while 
the Lille workers could produce from 
three to five ells per day, those of Val¬ 
enciennes could not finish more than 
an inch and a half in that time. Some 
took a year to make 24 inches, and it 
took 10 months, working 15 hours a 
day, to finish a pair of men’s ruffles. 

It was considered a recommendation 
to have a piece of lace made all by one 
hand. This old Valenciennes was fai 
superior to any now made under that 
name. The reseau was fine and com¬ 
pact, the flowers resembling cambric 
in their texture. The fault of the lace 
was its color, never a pure white, but, 
being so long under the hand in a 
damp atmosphere, of a reddish cast. 
In 1840, an old lady, Mile. Ursule, 
gathered the few old lace-makers left 





242 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


iii the city, and made the last piece of 
vrai Valenciennes of any importance 
which has been made in the city. It 
was a headdress, and was presented by 
the city to the Duchesse de Nemours. 
In the palmy days of Valenciennes, 
mothers used to hand these laces down 
to their children as scarcely less valua¬ 
ble than jewels. Even peasant women 
would lay by their earnings for a year 
to purchase a piece of vrai Valenci¬ 
ennes for a head-dress. 

The finest and most elaborate Valen- 
ciennes is now made at Ypres, in 
Flanders. Instead of the close reseau 
of the old lace, it has a clear wire 
ground, which throws the figure out 
well. On a piece of this Ypres lace 
not two inches wide, from 200 to 300 
bobbins are employed, and for larger 
widths as many as 800 or more are 
used on the same pillow. There are 
now in Flanders 400 lace schools, of 
which 157 are the properties of relig¬ 
ious communities. We may say here 
that lace-makers now use Scotch cot¬ 
ton chiefly, instead of linen, finding 
it cheaper, more elastic and brilliant. 
Only Alencon, some choice pieces of 
Brussels, and the finer qualities of 
Mechlin, are now made of flax. The 
difference can scarce!}' be perceived by 
the eye, and both wash equally well, 
but the cotton grows yellow with age, 
while linen retains its whiteness. 
Alencon, the only French lace now 
made on a pillow, was first made in 
France by an Italian worker, who, 
finding herself unable to teach the 
Alencon women the true Venetian 
stitch, struck out a new path, and, by 
assigning to each one a different part 
of the work, as Brussels did afterward, 
succeeded in producing the most elab¬ 
orate point ever made. 

Point Alencon is made entirely by 
the hand, on a parchment pattern, in 


small pieces afterward united by invisi¬ 
ble thread. This art of “fine joining” 
was formerly a secret confined to 
France and Belgium, but is now known 
in England and Ireland. Each part 
of this work is given to a different 
person, who is trained from childhood 
to that specialty. The number form¬ 
erly required was 18, but is now 12. 
The manufacture of Alencon was 
nearly extinct when Napoleon I. re¬ 
stored its prosperity. Among the 
orders executed for the Emperor on 
his marriage of Marie Louise was a 
bed furniture of great richness. Test¬ 
er, coverlet, curtains and pillow-cases 
were all of the finest Alencon a bride. 
Again the manufacture languished, 
though efforts were made to revive it, 
and, in 1840, 200 aged women — all 
who were left of the workers — were 
gathered. But the old point had been 
made by an hereditary set of workers, 
and the lace makers they were obliged 
to call to their help from other dis¬ 
tricts could not learn their stitches, 
consequently changes crept in. But 
the manufacture was revived, and some 
fine specimens were shown in the Ex¬ 
hibition of 1851, among them a flounce 
valued at 22,000 francs, which had 
taken 36 women 18 months to com¬ 
plete. This appeared afterward in the 
Empress Eugenie’s corbeille de mariage . 

The Chantilly lace, which owed its 
foundation to Catherine de Rohan, 
Duchesse de Longueville, has always 
been rather an object of luxury than of 
commercial value. Being considered a 
royal fabric, and its production for the 
nobility alone, the lace-workers be¬ 
come the victims of revolutionary fury 
in ’93, and all perished on the scaffold 
with their patrons. The manufacture 
was, however, revived, and prospered 
greatly during the First Empire. The 
white blonde was the rage in Paris in 




THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


243 


1805. The black was especially ad¬ 
mired in Spain and her American colo¬ 
nies. No other manufactories pro¬ 
duced such beautiful scarfs, mantillas, 
and other large pieces. Calvados and 
Bayeux make similar lace but not so 
well. The real Chantilly has a very 
fine reseau , and the workmanship of 
the flowers is close, giving the lace 
great firmness. The so-called Chantilly 
shawls, in the exhibition of 1862, were 
made at Bayeux. Chantilly produces 
only the extra fine shawls, dresses and 
scarfs. Honiton owes its reputation 
to its sprigs. Like the Brussels, they 
are made separately. At first they 
were worked in with the pillow, after¬ 
ward applique , or sewed on a ground of 
plain pillow-net. This net was very 
beautiful, but very expensive. It was 
made of the finest thread procured 
from Antwerp, the market price of 
which, in 1790, was £70 per pound. 
Ninety-five guineas have been paid a 
pound for this thread, and, in time of 
war, one hundred guineas. The price 
of the lace was costly in proportion, 
the manner of fixing it peculiar. The 
lace ground was spread out on the 
counter, and the worker herself desired 
to cover it with shillings. The num¬ 
ber of shillings that found a place on 
ber work was the price of it. A Hon¬ 
iton veil often cost a hundred guineas. 
But the invention of machine-net 
changed all that, and destroyed not 
only the occupation of the makers of 
hand-net, but was the cause of the lace 
falling into disrepute. Desirous to re¬ 
vive the work, Queen Adelaide ordered 
a dress of Honiton sprigs, on a ground 
of Brussels-net, the flowers to be copi¬ 
ed from nature. The skirt of this 
dress was encircled with a wreath of 
elegantly designed sprigs, the initials 
of the flowers forming Her Majesty’s 
name : Amaranth, Daphne, Eglantine, 


Lilac, Auricula, Ivy, Dahlia, Eglantine. 
Queen Victoria’s wedding lace was 
made at Honiton, difficulty being 
found in obtaining workers enough, 
the manufacture having been so little 
patronized. The dress, which cost 
£1,000, was entirely of Honiton sprigs 
connected on a pillow. The patterns 
were destro 3 T ed as soon as the lace 
was made. Several of the princesses 
have had their bridal dresses of 
Honiton. A new branch of industry 
has lately risen there — that of restor¬ 
ing or re-making old lace. When old 
lace revived it became a mania. The 
literary ladies were the first to take 
this fever to England. Sidney, Lady 
Morgan, and Lady Stepney made col¬ 
lections, and the Countess of Blessing- 
ton left at her death several large 
chests full of antique lace. In Paris, 
the celebrated dressmaker, Madame 
Camille, was the first one to bring old 
laces into fashion. Much lace is taken 
from old tombs, cleansed and sold, usu¬ 
ally after having been made over. All 
over Europe it was the custom to bury 
the dead in lace-trimmed garments, 
and in some cases these burial toilets 
were of immense value. In Bretagne, 
the bride, after her marriage, laid 
aside her veil and dress, and never 
wore it again till it was put on after 
she was dead. Many of these old 
tombs have been rifled, and the con¬ 
tents sold to dealers. In Ireland, lace¬ 
making was at one time quite 
successful. Swift, in the last century, 
urged the protection of home manu¬ 
factures of all kinds, and the Dublin 
Society, composed of a band of patriots 
organized in 1749, encouraged the 
making of lace, and passed strong res¬ 
olutions against the wearing of for¬ 
eign lace. Lady Arabella Demy, who 
died in 1792, a daughter of the Earl of 
Kerry, was especially active in the 







244 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


work, and good imitations of Brussels 
and Ypres lace were made. In 1829, 
the manufacture of Limerick lace was 
established. This is Tambour work 
on Nottingham-net. But the emigra¬ 
tion of girls to America, and the effort 
of the manufacturers to produce a 
cheap article, thus bringing it into 
disrepute, have prevented this lace 
from attaining success.— 


PHYSIOGNOMY. 

It is not only a generally admitted 
fact that the human face indicates 
mental character, but all men act upon 
it instinctively. We form opinions of 
persons by reading their characters in 
their faces ; and we do so, as it were, by 
the force of impressions. We take a 
like or dislike to a person the first time 
we come in contact with him, and form 
an opinion, favorable or unfavorable, 
from some impression — the face being 
regarded as the index ot the mind. It 
has been attempted to reduce the form 
and expressions of the human face to 
to a science, which has been named 
Pysiognomv. It certainly has not yet 
deservedly earned for itself the name of 
u a science, 11 although there are some 
general truths recognizable. About 
sixty years ago it was as popular as 
Phrenology was a few years since; its 
great apostle then was J. Caspar Lava- 
ter, whose writings have been trans¬ 
lated into several languages; but his 
opinions have, for a number of years, 
almost faded from remembrance. Re¬ 
cent efforts, however, have been made 
to revive them, thus showing that 
there are persons who still believe in 
the reality of physiognomy, and that 
it may yet be reduced to a science. 

Aristotle, Bacon, Fielding, Cowper, 
and others believed that the face was 


the index of the mind, and that they 
could read the character of a man by 
his face, as well as an author by his 
books. The opinions of great men are 
not to be credited as authority on anj 
subject as establishing a doubtful 
question ; the best of men are liable to 
mistakes. A science must be its own 
best witness — it must contain within 
itself the evidences of its own truth¬ 
fulness. Aristotle’s opinions of natu¬ 
ral philosophy, from the stereotyped 
deference paid to them by those who 
pretended to learning — held science in 
bondage for many ages. What is 
there in Physiognomy itself that will 
stand the test of examination? Ex¬ 
perience has taught every man that 
the first impressions of the character, 
judging from the faces of individuals, 
are often incorrect; although they 
may also have been frequently right. 
All there has yet been written on the 
subject, is more curious than useful, 
because of the infinite variety of form 
and expression in the human counte¬ 
nance, and which never can be reduced 
to rule nor system. However, some of 
the rules which have been laid down 
by the ablest writers on phj^siognomjq 
for judging of persons, will be of gen¬ 
eral interest to all. An abstract of 
some of them — the latest adopted, we 
will endeavor to present from the essay 
in the London Review. 

THE HAIR. 

Long, soft, and light hair will, in a 
man, betrav a feminine or child-like 
character; dark, coarse hair in a wom¬ 
an will reveal her too hard and mascu¬ 
line nature. In a man, dark coarse 
hair symbolizes strength and firmness 
in whatever direction it may be direct¬ 
ed. Brown and black hair are chiefly 
seen in those of active character; red 
and fair hair are associated with pas¬ 
siveness. The hair of Napoleon is said 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


245 


to liave been soft and silky as that of a 
child; and the conquering Barbarossa 

was so named from his red beard. We 

♦ 

therefore set down the above rules of 
judging of human character by the 
hair, like some of the rules of English 
grammar, in which the exceptions are 
too numerous to mention. Lavater 
always distrusted a man the color of 
whose hair contrasted with his eye¬ 
brows. Natural loss of hair in men 
often indicates a richly productive 
power of mind. Its abundance late in 
life betrays poverty and inactivity of 
mind. These rules have also their ex¬ 
ceptions. Men having bushy heads in 
old age, like Calhoun, have been dis¬ 
tinguished in science, art, learning and 
eloquence. 

THE FACE. 

“In general the upper half of the 
face has the symbols of the intellectual 
character and the feelings; the lower 
half those of the propensities and the 
will. The nose is symbolical of varie¬ 
ties of intellect; the eyes, of the 
disposition; the mouth, varieties of 
sensuous character.” 

THE NOSE. 

“All noses less than one third of the 
face in length, are of the small class. 
The varieties of these are numerous 
in the snub, flat, and up-turned or ce¬ 
lestial. All such noses indicate defect¬ 
ive intellectual power, and do so with 
a symbolism, which nothing but excel¬ 
lence in the form of the head, as in the 
case of Socrates, can neutralize. That 
is, Socrates was an exception to this 
rule of noses ; so was William Pitt, 
the younger, and the only genuine 
portrait of Shakspeare, represents him 
with a rather short, but not pug, nor 
flat nose. 

“The thicker and longer forms of 
snub nose in either sex commonly in¬ 
dicate the predominance of the mate¬ 


rial sensuous nature ; and a turn-up 
nose, with wide obvious nostrils, is an 
open indication of an empty, inflated 
mind — a spurious imitation of that 
strength and lofty pride which the 
wide nostrils in a well-formed nose in¬ 
dicates.” 

Physiognomists are decidedly hostile 
to the upturned nose; a form which 
we consider decidedly excellent for 
taking snuff, a plea that we cannot 
refrain from putting in for their credit. 

“ Large noses in men are generally 
good signs, especially they add empha¬ 
sis to the good indications of a well 
formed head, but they must not be too 
fleshy or too lean. If they are long, 
but not snout-like, they mark the in- 
intelligent, observant and productive 
nature of the refined mind. If Ro¬ 
man, arched high, and strong, they are 
generally associated with a less devel¬ 
oped forehead and a larger hind head ; 
they disclose strength of will and en¬ 
ergy, rather than intellectual power; 
they also show a want of that refine¬ 
ment indicated by the straighter nose. 
The Jewish, or hawk-nose, indicates 
shrewdness in worldly matters; it 
adds force to the narrow, concentra- 
tive forehead symbolical of singleness 
of object; and its usual narrow nos¬ 
trils wear the unfailing sign of caution 
and timidity. The Greek straight nose 
indicates refinement of character, love 
of the fine arts, astuteness and craft, 
rather than direct action. 

A nose slightly bifid at its end in¬ 
dicates an analytic mind. Such noses, 
large and broad pointed, are frequent 
in men having acute practical knowl¬ 
edge of the world. The nose wide- 
nostriled, wide at the end, thick and 
broad, indicates a mind that has strong 
powers of thought and is given to 
close and serious meditation. A nose 
whose ridge is broad, no matter 





246 


TUB PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


whether straight or curved, always an¬ 
nounces superior faculties. A small 
nostril is the certain sign of a timid 
spirit. A thick, fleshy nose indicates 
grossness and sensuality. A lean, 
sharp nose indicates want of fervor and 
a selfish adhesion to the formalities of 
life.” 

These opinions of physiognomists 
respecting the characteristics of noses, 
relate only to those of men ; hut they 
hold that those noses of ill-omen in 
men are reallv worse in women. 
These opinions must not be held cor¬ 
rect for universal application, and yet 
there is much truth contained in them, 
as common observation will teach any 
man. They are, however, curiously 
interesting, as attempts made by some 
naturalists to reduce to a science, as an 
index of mind and character, the act¬ 
ual forms of men. 


THE MOUNTAINS OF SCRIPTURE. 

Mount Ararat, whereon, says Moses, 
the ark rested, consists of two peaks, 
separated by a valley. The great 
Ararat rises to the height of 17,210 feet 
from the level of the sea, and the 
lesser, or little Ararat, to 13,000. The 
great Ararat was ascended after much 
toil, by Professor Parrot, in 1829; 
probably then pressed by the foot of 
man for the first time since Noah. 

Carmel, the scene of the trial be¬ 
tween Elijah and the worshipers of 
Baal, as to whether Jehovah or Baal 
was God, is the general name of a 
range of hills extending north-west 
from the plain of Esdrselon, and end¬ 
ing in a bold promontory on the shore 
of the Mediterranean, forming the bay 
of Acre. The extent of the range is 
six miles, and the greatest height 1,500 
feet. 

Mounts Ebal and Gerizim, in Sama¬ 


ria, rise about 800 feet, having a valley 
about 250 paces wide between. On 
these hills was performed the grand 
ceremony, on the Israelites gaining 
possession of the land of promise, for 
which Moses had left directions. Six 
tribes were placed upon Mount Ger¬ 
izim to bless the people, and six upon 
Mount Ebal to curse. In later times 
the Samaritans built a temple on 
Mount Gerizim, and they still regard it 
as holy ground. 

Mount Hor, on the summit of 
which Aaron died, is situated in Ara¬ 
bia Petrea, on the confines of Idumea, 
and rises to the elevation of 3,000 feet. 

Lebanon, whose renowned “ cedars ” 
are many times alluded to, is the name 
applied in Scripture to both the Liba- 
nus and Anti-Libanus mountains, two 
parallel ranges, running from north¬ 
east to south-west, on the northern 
shores of Palestine. The average height 
of the range is about 10,000 feet. 

Mount Moriah, one of the hills upon 
which Jerusalem was built of old, and 
the site of Solomon’s temple, and the 
present Mosque of Omar, is about 
2,000 feet above the level of the Med¬ 
iterranean, and separated from the 
Mount of Olives by the narrow valley 
of Jehosaphat. 

Mount of Olives, sacred as the fre¬ 
quent resort of the Savior for medita¬ 
tion and prayer, derived its name from 
the number and beauty of the olive 
trees. It rises about 150 feet above 
its opposite neighbor, Moriah, and is 
the place of burial of the Jews. 

Mount Sinai, where “the Lord 
descended in fire,” and gave the com¬ 
mandments to Moses, is a wild, deso¬ 
late region of granite peaks and 
precipices, deep ravines and water¬ 
courses. Its hight is 7,000 feet and 
the length of the whole is three 
miles. 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Mount Tabor is a beautiful moun¬ 
tain, standing alone on the north-east¬ 
ern border of the plain of Esdrselon, 
south from Nazareth. To this hill 
tradition points as the spot hallowed 
by the transfiguration of our Lord; 
and this event is still yearly celebrated 
there by the Latin and the Greek 
churches. 

Mount Zion, many times alluded to 
in Scripture as the “ holy hill,” “beau¬ 
tiful for situation,” etc., was one of 
the four hills upon which ancient 
Jerusalem was built. It is rather 
lower than Olivet, surrounded by the 
valleys of Hinnom and Jehosaphat; 
and at one time formed the citadel, 
or heart of the city. 


HOW ALUM IS OBTAINED. 

In some portions of Europe, alum 
stone, a grayish colored mineral, is 
found in large quantities, from which 
the best alum of commerce is procured. 
In Italy, this stone is obtained from 
quarries by blasting, and when exposed 
for a short time to a moist atmosphere, 
becomes friable and eventually falls to 
pieces. 

The first process in the manufacture 
of this variety of alum is the erection 
of parallel piles of these stones, ar¬ 
ranged in regularly formed layers, on 
each side of which, and in close prox¬ 
imity, channels are excavated and filled 
with water. A. gentle heat is then 
applied, and the water sprinkled over 
the heaps at frequent intervals. By 
this treatment the stones commence 
to pulverize, but the moistening is 
continued for several weeks, as it fa¬ 
cilitates the separation of their con¬ 
stituent elements. When completely 
pulverized the powder is thoroughly 
boiled in vessels specially prepared for 
this purpose. This process causes a 


247 

subsidence of earthy ingredients, and 
an evaporation of all volatile foreign 
substances. The liquid is then with¬ 
drawn into other vessels, and allowed 
to remain undisturbed until the alum 
appears in the form of crystals, which 
is usually the case in the course of a 
few days. This is termed Roman alum, 
and is regarded as the most valuable 
variety in the market, because possess¬ 
ing fewer impurities than any other. 
It can be readily recognized by the 
auburn tint seen on the surface, which 
is imparted to it by the presence of 
minute particles of sulphate of iron. 

Another varietv of alum is manufact- 
%/ 

ured from alum slate, a species of sand¬ 
stone containing a large quantity of 
clay, which is extensively disseminated 
throughout different portions of the 
United States and Canada. In its pre¬ 
paration, the slates, like the alum rocks, 
are arranged in regularly formed mass¬ 
es and subjected to a certain amount 
of heat and moisture. At Whitby, 
where the most extensive manufacto¬ 
ries of Europe are located, these masses 
are often built to a height of one hun¬ 
dred feet, and owing to the compo¬ 
sition of these slates, twelve months, 
and often more, are required for the 
burning process. After an artificial 
fire has been continued for several 
weeks, no additional food is necessary, 
as the chemical changes in the ingre¬ 
dient will furnish sufficient material 
for combustion. When thoroughly 
pulverized by this process, the powder 
is placed in large vessels of water, 
where the soluble salts they contain 
are washed out, after which the liquor 
is boiled, and for the purpose of elimin¬ 
ating all impurities, condensed by the 
agency of heat into a powerful solution 
of copperas and the sulphate of ammo¬ 
nia or basic alum. This liquor thus 
condensed is conveyed into large tanks, 








248 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


where the iron is chemically separated 
and a suitable alkali added (the basic 
alum not possessing the property of 
crystallization) which causes the form¬ 
ation of crystals on the side of the 
tanks. These are again dissolved, and 
the solution placed in casks, around 
the sides of which, in a short time, 
the alum crystals are re-formed, and 
these, when they become free from 
moisture, are ready for market. It is 
estimated that tons of alum slate 
are required to one ton of alum. 


THE LOST ARTS. 

In regard to colors we are far behind 
the ancients. None of the colors in 
the Egyptian paintings of thousands 
of years ago are in the least faded, 
except the green. The Tyrian purple 
of the entombed city of Pompeii is as 
fresh to-day as it was three thousand 
years ago. Some of the stucco, paint¬ 
ed ages before the Christian era, broken 
up and mixed, reverted to its original 
lustre. And yet we pity the ignorance 
of the dark-skinned children of the 
ancient Egypt. The colors upon the 
walls of Nero’s festal vaults are as 
fresh as if painted yesterday. So is 
the cheek of the Egyptian prince who 
was contemporaneous with Solomon 
and Cleopatra, at whose feet Caesar laid 
the riches of his empire. 

And in regard to metals: The edges 
of the statues of the obelisks of Egypt, 
and of the ancient walls of Rome, are 
sharp as if hewn but yesterday. And 
the stones still remain so closely fitted 
that their seams, laid with mortar, can¬ 
not be penetrated with the edge of a 
penknife. And their surface is exceed¬ 
ingly hard — so hard, that when the 
French artists engraved two lines upon 
the obelisk brought from Egypt, they 
destroyed, in the tedious task, many of 


the best tools which can be manufact¬ 
ured. And yet these ancient monu¬ 
ments are traced all over with inscrip¬ 
tions placed upon them in olden time. 
This, with other facts of a striking 
character, proves that they were far 
more skilled in metals than we are. 
Quite recently it is recorded that when 
an American vessel was on the shores 
of Africa, a son of that benighted re¬ 
gion made from an iron hoop a knife 
superior to any on board the vessel, 
and another made a sword of Damas¬ 
cus excellence from a piece of iron. 

Fiction is very old: Scott had his 
counterpart two thousand years ago. 
A story is told of a warrior who had no 
time to wait for the proper forging of 
his weapon, but seized it red-hot, and 
found to his surprise that the cool air 
had tempered his iron into an excellent 
steel weapon. The tempering of steel, 
therefore, new to us a century since, 
was old two thousand years ago. 

Ventilation is deemed a very modern 
art. But this is not the fact, for aper¬ 
tures, unquestionably made for the 
purpose of ventilation, are found in 
the pyramid tombs of Egypt. Yet 
thousands of years ago the barbarous 
pagans went so far as to ventilate their 
tombs, while we yet scarcely know 
how to ventilate our houses. 


HOW TO CUT CLASS BOTTLES, Etc. 


Get a rod of iron heated to redness, 
and having filled your vessel the exact 
height you wish it to be cut, with oil 
of any kind, you proceed to very grad¬ 
ually dip the red-hot iron into the oil, 
which heating all along the surface, 
suddenly the glass chips and cracks 
right round, when you can lift off* the 
upper portion clean by the surface of 
the oil. 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


249 


REGULAR EATING. 


Half of all ordinary diseases would 
be banished from civilized life, and 
dyspepsia become almost unknown, if 
everybody would eat but thrice a day 
at regular times, and not an atom be¬ 
tween meals, the intervals not being 
less than five hours, that being the 
time required to digest a full meal 
and pass it out of the stomach. If a 
person eats between meals, the pro¬ 
cess of digestion of the food already 
in the stomach is arrested, until the 
last which has been eaten is brought 
into the condition of the former meal; 
just as, if water is boiling and ice is 
put in, the whole ceases to boil until 
the ice is molted and brought to the 
boiling point, and then the whole 
boils together. But it is a law of 
nature that all food begins to decay 
after exposure to heat and moisture 
for a certain time. If a meal is eat¬ 
en, and in two hours another, the 
whole remains undigested for seven 
hours, before which time the rotten- 
ing process commences, and the man 
lias his stomach full of carrion — the 
very idea of which is horribly dis¬ 
gusting. As then, all the food in the 
stomach is in a state of fermentative 
decay, it becomes unfit for the pur¬ 
pose of nutrition, and for making 
good, pure blood. Small wonder is it 
that dyspeptics have such a variety of 
symptoms, and aches and complaints 
in every part of the system, for there 
is not one drop of pure blood in the 
whole; hence the nerves, which feed 
on this impure and imperfect blood, 
are not properly nourished, and as a 
consequence become diseased. They 
u complain;” they are hungry — and 
like a hungry man — are peevish, fret¬ 
ful, restless. We call it nervousness, 
and no one ever knew of a dyspeptic 


who was not restless, fretful, fidgety, 
and essentially disagreeable, fitful and 
uncertain. The stomach is made of a 
number of muscles, all of which are 
brought into requisition in the pro¬ 
cess of digestion. But no muscle can 
work always. The busy heart is in a 
state of repose for one-third of its 
time. The eye can work twice in a 
second, but this could not be contin¬ 
ued five minutes. The hands and 
feet must have rest, and so with 
the muscles of the stomach; they 
only can rest when there is no work 
for them to do — no food in the stom¬ 
ach for them to digest. — Dr. Hall. 


THE PRISM OF ODORS. 

There are certain odors which, on 
being mixed in due proportion, produce 
a new aroma, perfectly distinct and 
peculiar to itself. This effect is exem¬ 
plified by comparison with the influ¬ 
ence of certain colors, when mixed, 
upon the nerve of vision : such, for 
instance, as when yellow and blue are 
mixed, the result we call green ; or 
when blue and red are united, the 
compound color is known as puce or 
violet. Jasmine and patchouli produce 
a novel aroma, and many others in like 
manner; and proportion and relative 
strength, when so mixed, must of 
course be studied, and the substances 
used accordingly. If the same quan¬ 
tity of any given otto be dissolved in a 
like proportion of spirit, and the solu¬ 
tion be mixed in equal proportions, the 
strongest odor is instantly indicated by 
covering or hiding the presence of the 
other. In this way we discover that 
patchouli, lavender, neroli, and ver¬ 
bena are the most potent of the vege¬ 
table odors, and that violet, tuberose, 
and jasmine are the most delicate. 

Many persons will at first consider 









250 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


that we are asking too much, when we 
express a desire to have the same defer¬ 
ence paid to the olfactory nerve as the 
other nerves that influence our phys¬ 
ical pleasures and pains. By tutoring 
the olfactory nerve, it is capable of 
perceiving in the atmosphere matter 
of the most subtle nature ; not only 
that which is pleasant, but also that 
which is unhealthy. If an unpleasant 
odor is a warning to seek a purer 
atmosphere, surely it is worth while 
to cultivate that power which enables 
us to act up to that warning for the 
general benefit to health.— 


LEAP YEAR. 

There are a great many people who 
do not understand the philosophy of 
the leap year. Some even suppose 
that leap year was instituted by the 
goddess Venus only to confer upon 
ladies the privilege of popping the 
question, or that February has twenty- 
nine days that it might have a chance 
of the luck of odd numbers. Of 
course it is not necessar}^ to bring any 
science to bear against such notions. 
The subject really involves certain 
important niceties, which we are per¬ 
suaded not more than one in a thou¬ 
sand clearly comprehends, and for that 
reason we shall try to elucidate it. 

Our civil year is founded upon the 
period of the revolution of the earth 
about the sun. We say founded upon, 
only, for the natural or astronomical 
year as determined by astronomers is 
not the same period of time as the 
civil year. If the natural year had 
exactly 365 or 366 da} r s, there would 
be no trouble; the civil year would 
accord with it and represent precisely 
the same period of time. But the 
natural year cannot be divided into an 
exact number of days ; and to compli¬ 


cate the matter still more, astronomers 
show us that there are several kinds 
of natural years, in consequence of 
there being several distinct but legiti¬ 
mate ways of measuring the period of 
the earth's orbit. 

We give two examples. Let the 
earth, the sun and a fixed star be in 
the same straight line at a given in¬ 
stant. Now the time that will elapse 
before they will be again in the same 
relative position is one kind of year. 
This year is called a sidereal year, and 
its length is 365 d. 6 h. 9 m. 9.6 sec. 
But if the period be measured on the 
ecliptic, as, for example, the time 
which elapses between the sun’s cross¬ 
ing one of the equinoctial points and 
again reaching the same, we get a 
different result. This year is called 
the equinoctial, tropical, or solar year, 
and its length is 365 d. 5 h. 48 m. 49.7 
seconds. 

Now it has been agreed that this 
solar year shall be the foundation or 
standard of the civil year, and that 
the two shall be brought as nearly as 
possible into accord. In ancient times 
the subject was very poorly under¬ 
stood, and the civil year was constantly 
getting out of reckoning with the sun. 
The discrepancy evidently became a 
serious affair when the natural Winter 
encroached on the Summer of the cal¬ 
endar. 

Julius Cffisar, 46, B. C., made the 
fir^t reasonable and substantial reform. 
He saw that the solar year was about 
365i days long — the figures were near 
enough the truth to answer his pur¬ 
pose. If the civil 3 'ear be 365 days, it 
is a quarter of a day short of the solar 
year; four civil years would have lost 
just a whole day. He therefore or¬ 
dered that every fourth civil year 
should have 366 days. Thus orig¬ 
inated the leap year By his changes 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


251 


in the reckoning of time, Caesar’s 
name is made to live forever and to 
be on the lips of all men. The month 
of July is named in his honor, and 
the Julian calendar is still followed 
over a considerable part of the earth. 

If the solar year were exactly 365^ 
days, there would never have arisen 
an occasion to reform the Julian cal¬ 
endar. In fact, every Julian year gets 
in advance of the solar year about 10 
minutes ; in a century nearly a whole 
day. 

In Caesar’s time the vernal equinox 
fell on the 25th of March; in the 
sixteenth century it had fallen back 
to the 11th. The difference was get¬ 
ting to be important, and the subject 
was ably discussed. The result was 
that Pope Gregory XIII., in 1577, 
approved and ordered a reform. The 
change actually took effect in 1582. 
In honor of the Council of Nice, ten 
days were dropped from the calendar, 
in order to bring the vernal equinox, 
for all time, on that day of the month, 
the 21st of March, at which it oc¬ 
curred in the year (325) of the meet¬ 
ing of the council. If there had been 
respect for the memory of Caesar, 
fourteen days, instead of ten, would 
have been omitted. 

To prevent a discrepancy in the 
future, between the solar and civil 
year, it was found that if only those 
centennial years of which the number, 
after suppressing the two cyphers, is 
divisible by four, be regarded as leap 
years, the purpose is accomplished. 
The plan was adopted. In accord¬ 
ance with it, 1900 will not be a leap 
year. 

The Protestant nations and those 
under rule of the Greek Church, of 
course looked upon a reform insti¬ 
tuted by a pope, with no favor. But 
Protestant Germany and Denmark 


adopted it in 1700; England followed 
in 1752, and from that time forward, 
“ old style ” and u new style ” of neces¬ 
sity became household words wherever 
English was spoken. The Greek 
Church is, however, unrelenting, and 
all those nations which are under 
its government still adhere to the Ju¬ 
lian calendar. The most conspicuous 
among these nations is Russia. Julian 
reckoning is now twelve days later 
than Gregorian. 


MALACHITE, 

This is a copper ore much prized in 
the ornamental arts. It is a peculiar 
variety of the green carbonate of cop¬ 
per, and is found in a number of local¬ 
ities, but perfect crj^stals are very rare. 
It usually accompanies other copper 
ores, and forms incrustations which, 
when thick, have the colors banded, 
and extremelv delicate in their shades 
and blending. The copper mines of 
Cheshire, Conn., have produced hand¬ 
some specimens, so have some of the 
copper mines of New Jersey, but the 
mines of Siberia are the most distin¬ 
guished for large and fine specimens, 
and at the World’s Fair in London, 
the Russian department was the ad¬ 
miration of all visitors, because of the 
numerous articles of malachite dis¬ 
played. 

A pair of malachite doors, fourteen 
feet high and 7 feet broad, were much 
extolled. The mineral formed the 
veneering, one-fourth of an inch thick, 
built upon a frame of metal. The 
pieces were most tastefully arranged, 
and produced a fine effect. Thirty men 
were employed a whole year in cutting, 
fitting and polishing the pieces, and 
the work went on, day and night, from 
May, 1850, to May, 1851. A fine 
chimney piece and numerous vases 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


of the same material were grouped 
together, the whole being valued at 
$90,000. 

In St. Petersburg there is a large 
manufactory of malachite ornaments. 
The pieces — generally of only a few 
pounds weight — are first sawed into 
thin plates, with revolving metal disks, 
sand and water being fed into the slit, 
in the same manner that fine marble is 
cut. The curved pieces of this min¬ 
eral are cut by bent saws, the manage¬ 
ment of which is very difficult. 

The workman cuts his veneers ac¬ 
cording to the shades and veins of the 
mineral, so as to produce the best effect 
when all the pieces are fitted into the 
finished article. The edges of the 
pieces are ground quite smooth by 
revolving copper wheels, like those 
which our jewelers employ. The 
pieces are united with a cement col¬ 
ored with malachite powder, and when 
all fitted into a frame, the entire sur¬ 
face is ground and polished. The price 
of the finest specimens of malachite is 
about three dollars per pound. It re¬ 
ceives a high polish, and is used for 
ear-rings, snuff-boxes, and other orna¬ 
mental articles; but although it is so 
beautiful, owing to its delicate shad¬ 
ings of color, it is not much esteemed 
by jewelers, because it is so brittle 
and difficult to work; it is sometimes 
passed off in jewelry for turquoise, but 
it is inferior in hardness to this pre¬ 
cious stone. 

In the Palace of Versailles, Paris, 
there is one room furnished with 
tables, vases and other articles of mal¬ 
achite. The specimens found in our 
own copper mines have only been em¬ 
ployed to grace cabinets, in a minerol- 
ogical sense ; but the time will yet 
arrive when it will be used in American 
ornamental art, rivaling the finest pro¬ 
ductions of the Russian Empire. 


FURNITURE AND ORNAMENTS OF 
THE ANCIENTS. 

To the inquisitive student, the do¬ 
mestic economy of the nations of 
antiquity is a subject full of curious 
interest and instruction. Particularly 
is this the case in respect to the arti¬ 
cles of furniture employed in theii 
chambers and kitchens. Since wood, 
of which the largest portion of their 
household utensils were necessarily 
manufactured, is so perishable in its 
nature, fragmentary vestiges only exist 
after the lapse of centuries of time. 
Hence, on this subject, our informa¬ 
tion is comparatively only imperfect 
and limited, and must be gleaned 
principally from such of their monu¬ 
mental remains as have withstood the 
ravages of time: for example, bas- 
reliefs and various works of art, on 
which they were accustomed to en¬ 
grave or impress representations of 
their different household articles. 

The earliest advances in civilization 
and refinement are generally attrib¬ 
uted to the ancient Egyptians. In 
the construction and arrangement of 
their dwellings, variety and osten¬ 
tation, rather than uniformit} r and 
practical utility, were conspicuous 
characteristics, especially among the 
more opulent classes. The evidence 
of their peculiar taste in this respect 
is discoverable in the fact that the 
wings, windows and doors of any indi¬ 
vidual dwelling were rarely in exact 
correspondence with each other, either 
in design or in construction. 

In so far as domestic articles of 
general utility and convenience, as 
well as many household luxuries, were 
concerned, modern nations are not far 
in advance of this people, even after 
the lapse of many centuries. They 
manufactured chairs from the most 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


253 


valuable descriptions of wood, which 
were models of costly and exquisite 
workmanship, tastefully ornamented 
with carved ivory and the precious 
metals, and supplied with soft and 
luxurious cushions. The seats and 
stools designed for habitual use rather 
than display, bore a strong resem¬ 
blance to those of bamboo manufact¬ 
ure, and some were constructed upon 
the principle of the ordinary folding 
camp-stool. Sofas, lounges and otto¬ 
mans, rivalling the most elaborate 
articles of modern times, were usually 
found among the furniture of the 
wealthy classes. Their tables, both in 
form and structure, were not unlike 
those of the present day. We have 
also satisfactory evidence of their ac¬ 
quaintance with the manufacture of 
carpets, but to what state of excellence 
they attained in this industry we have 
no means of ascertaining, as but a 
single imperfect specimen, made prin¬ 
cipally from wool and linen, has been 
preserved. The bedsteads used by the 
poorer classes were of very rude con¬ 
struction, and seem to have been made 
of pliant branches of trees, roughly 
interlaced with each other ; but among 
the wealthy, the frames were man¬ 
ufactured from iron and bronze, 
enriched with elegant devices, and 
furnished with luxurious and downy 
mattrasses. Their mirrors for the 
most part were composed of highly 
polished copper, to which were at¬ 
tached handles elaborately decorated. 
Their culinary utensils generally seem 
to have differed but little from those 
employed in modern times, although 
they were unacquainted with the use 
of knives and forks as articles of table 
furniture, using in their stead spoons 
and ladles. Vases seem to have con¬ 
stituted a prominent feature among 
their domestic utensils, as large num¬ 


bers, in great variety, have been 
discovered, designed for practical, re¬ 
ligious and ornamental purposes. The 
skill and taste displayed in their man¬ 
ufacture cannot be surpassed by all 
the appliances modern invention and 
ingenuity have devised. 

The taste of their cotemporaries, the 
Assyrians, was differently manifested. 
Being a fierce and haughty people, 
devoted to war and its kindred pursuit, 
the chase, they were less interested as 
a nation in the comforts and elegan¬ 
cies of domestic life, although many 
relics have been discovered which attest 
the luxurious character of their house¬ 
hold conveniences. Barbaric splendor 
and elaborate ornamentation were the 
chief characteristics of their furniture. 
They decorated profusely their tables, 
couches, chairs, etc., with bold, vigorous 
representations of animal life. Culin¬ 
ary utensils, both in design and con¬ 
struction, were very similar to those dis¬ 
covered among the Egyptians. Their 
workmanship in woods and metals was 
of the highest order, while a display 
of gorgeousness and magnificence was 
their chief aim and study. The 
domestic articles they manufactured 
from ivory, mother of pearl, and cop¬ 
per, have never been surpassed, either 
for boldness of design or excellence of 
execution, and the discovery of so 
many bas-reliefs and other relics attest 
the remarkable proficiency they at¬ 
tained in carving and chasing. 

Writers generally unite in the opin¬ 
ion that the Grecians were indebted to 
the Assyrians for the introduction of 
many of the comforts and luxuriets 
of domestic life, although in the earlier 
periods of their history, this people re¬ 
garded them as of little consequence. 
Even in the time of Pericles, the most 
prosperous period of the existence of 
Athens, private dwellings made no 




254 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


pretensions to stateliness in construc¬ 
tion or elegance in their interior 
arrangements. These were displayed 
in the erection of public edifices, and 
buildings devoted to sacred purposes. 
Among the early Grecians, couches 
were usually made to accommodate a 
number of persons, and were of ex¬ 
ceedingly simple construction, and 
overlaid with skins or drapery; at 
meals, these were occupied exclusively 
by the men, the females and children 
being seated upon chairs. Other arti¬ 
cles of furniture, both for chamber 
and culinary purposes, and intended 
for daily use and convenience 3 were 
manufactured on a scale of similar 
simplicity. But in the preparation of 
articles designed for ornamental and 
sacred purposes, they rivalled the 
Egyptians and Assyrians, both in 
beauty of design and equisite execu¬ 
tion. It will be -observed that vases* 
occupy, with all nations of antiquity, 
the most prominent place among all 
articles intended either for use or 
ornament. But among no people was 
there so great a profusion and variety 
as among the Grecians. Every arti¬ 
cle was distinguished for remarkable 
gracefulness of form and delicacy of 
design, and modern art in vain strives 
to parallel the singular beauty of the 
specimens antiquarians have procured. 
From Greece, domestic articles, both 
for use and ornament, were introduced 
among the less polished Romans, who 
lavished prodigal sums upon these 
skillful artificers. Upon the construc¬ 
tion and decoration of their couches 
especially they expended almost fabu¬ 
lous amounts. They were not unfre- 
quently ornamented with gold, silver, 
ivory and tortoise shell. Indeed, on 
almost every article of comfort or lux¬ 
ury, they were almost boundless in 
their extravagance. Frames of carved 


marble sustained their tables, and 
their chairs of state were elaborately 
chased and ornamented, and the most 
costly materials were employed in 
their fabrication. 


ORIGINATORS OF INVENTIONS. 

It is worthy of remark that many 
inventions which have influenced in a 
great degree the interests of the world, 
have been brought on by persons whose 
professional or business pursuits were 
widely different from those to which 
their inventions pertained. The atten¬ 
tion of their inventors was perhaps 
called to the subject of the improve¬ 
ment by some trifling circumstance or 
incident, and, as if aided by some 
inspiration, they wrought out the idea 
in a tangible form. 

The cotton gin has had an immense 
influence on the manufacturing inter¬ 
est of the whole world, and it is almost 
of unparalleled value, yet the inventor 
of that machine was neither an opera¬ 
tive mechanic nor machinist, being a 
poor school teacher endowed with 
ingenious mechanical proclivities, and 
which were stimulated by the assertion 
of a female patron, upon a time when 
the tediousness of cotton-picking was 
the subject of an evening’s conversation, 
that her friend Whitney could no 
doubt make a machine to accomplish 
this, for she believed he could make 
almost anything, and so his attention 
was called to the want of such a ma¬ 
chine, and the result is known to every 
one who knows the name of Eli Whit¬ 
ney. The spinning-jenny, which is 
perhaps hardly second to the cotton- 
gin in the important influence it has 
on textile manufactures, was the inven¬ 
tion of an English barber — Richard 
Arkwright. 

It would almost seem preposterous 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION, 


255 


to suppose that a clergyman, whose 
mission is to preach peace and good 
will to all mankind, should be engaged 
in perfecting fire-arms, yet we find 
that a Rev. Mr. Forsyth, a Scottish 
clergyman, so perfected the gunlock, 
that within the space of twenty years 
the entire form and principle of that 
lock, changed from the flint to the 
percussion principle, was adopted. An 
English clergyman has also rendered 
his name famous by the invention of 
the power-loom, the importance of 
which is scarcely less than that of the 
cotton-gin and spinning-jenny. 

Two of the most eminent names of 
Americans associated with the science 
of electricity are Franklin and Morse, 
the one a printer and the other a 
painter. The inventor of the process 
of puddling iron was Henry Cort, a 
jeweler. The first man who suggested 
the casting of stereotyped plates from 
pages of printed type was William 
Ged, a goldsmith of Edinburgh, and 
his attention was called to the subject 
about the year 1725, by hearing a 
printer lament the want of a good let¬ 
ter founder in Scotland. Ged suggest¬ 
ed the taking of casts of forms of type 
and then casting solid plates from these 
casts, thus making a small stock of type 
serve for the preparation of large 
works. He was successful in produc¬ 
ing specimens of plates, yet the inven¬ 
tion was not put into use for fifty years 
after his death. 

For steam navigation we are indebt¬ 
ed more than to any one else to Robert 
Fulton, an American portrait painter ; 
and J. P. Smith, an English farmer, 
has been mainly instrumental in the 
successful introduction of the screw 
propeller by suggesting the best meth¬ 
od of arranging it in the ship. 

From these examples, which are but 
a few among the many that could be 


cited, the mechanic and would-be in¬ 
ventor may learn a lesson. Although 
there are opportunities in his own 
occupation for him to exercise his in¬ 
ventive faculties, yet there are also 
opportunities in other trades, to which 
his attention may be directed by the 
expression of a want or the wish that 
a certain object could be attained. 
Oftentimes a casual remark may be the 
means of calling out inventions that 
are of some moment and bring ade¬ 
quate rewards. 


MANUFACTURE OF HAIR CLOTH. 

Our readers have, no doubt, often 
wondered where all the hair is obtained 
for the manufacture of hair cloth, and 
how the manufacture is conducted. 
There is a hair cloth factory in Cen¬ 
tral Falls, R. I. The hair used is that 
of horses' tails, and is imported from 
South America and Russia; mostly 
from the latter country. It is pur¬ 
chased at the great annual fairs of 
Isbilt and Nijni Novgorod. That pur¬ 
chased in June at the latter place will 
be received in about sixty days ; and 
that bought at Isbilt, in February, in 
about six months. As it comes of 
various colors, it is, for the purpose 
of this manufacture, all dyed black. 
A certain proportion, however, is pur¬ 
chased in England and France, already 
prepared for the loom. It is worth 
from fifty cents to four dollars per 
pound, according to length, the price 
increasing in rapid ratio after the 
length attains twenty-four inches. 

The “rough hair,” or that which is 
imported in its natural state, is hackled, 
and the shortest sold to the manufac¬ 
turers of mattrasses, it being first 
curled. After being hackled, the dif¬ 
ferent lengths are combed out, assort¬ 
ed, tied in bunches, and made ready 








256 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


for coloring. After this process, the 
bunches are carefully inspected, meas¬ 
ured and put away for the loom. The 
cloth is made in widths of from four¬ 
teen to thirty-two inches. 

Contrary to the popular idea, the 
hair is not, as a rule, round. A section 
under the microscope shows a form as 
though a third of a circle had been cut 
off, and the flat portion slightly in¬ 
dented. This conformation causes 
some difficulties in the manipulation, 
which require great skill and the most 
delicate machinery to overcome. The 
warp used is made of cotton and pre¬ 
pared with great care. A bunch of 
hair which has been soaked in water is 
placed in position, and the individual 
hairs are picked up, to be, by the shut¬ 
tle, laid carefully in the weft. If the 
machine fail to take a hair, which oc¬ 
casionally happens in practice, it con¬ 
tinues its efforts until it succeeds, the 
other portions of the machinery stand¬ 
ing still in the mean time. The shuttle 
is an awkward looking, but most deli¬ 
cately operating implement. The hair 
must not be bruised, and it must not 
be stretched ; the necessity for such 
gentle manipulation has led to the 
idea that no machinery could be con¬ 
structed capable of performing the 
operation with sufficient exactitude 
and regularity ; but this, as we have 
seen, is now shown to be a fallacy. 


TELOCITY OF THE WIND. 

When the wind moves at the rate 
of one mile an hour, it is hardly per¬ 
ceptible ; at two miles an hour, it fans 
us as the gentle zephyr, and at six it 
becomes a pleasant wind. From ten to 
twenty, it becomes high ; and thirty 
to fifty characterize storms from light 
to hard; at eighty it becomes a hur¬ 
ricane, and at one hundred a tornado. 


HISTORY OF THE FLAX PLANT. 


The flax plant was among the earlh 
est substances adapted to the clothing 
of mankind, as we find in the Old 
Testament frequent references both to 
the plant and to the fabric made from 
it. Mr. Baines, in his u History of the 
Cotton Manufacture,” observes that in 
the time of Joseph, 1,700 years before 
the Christian era, it is recorded that 
Pharaoh arrayed himself in a vesture 
of fine linen (Gen. xii. 42). Allusion 
is again made to the same manufacture 
two centuries later, in the time of 
Moses (Exod. xxxv. 26 and 35). So 
that linen appears to have been the 
national manufacture of Egypt, whose 
tombs afford strong evidence of the 
antiquity of this industrial occupation, 
and lead us to infer that, at least 3,500 
years ago, the delicate stems of the 
flax plant waved on the banks of the 
Nile, and that the spindle and shuttle 
— or some substitute for these imple¬ 
ments— were busily plied among a 
swarming population of weavers of 
linen. Paintings representing the 
culture of the plant have been found 
on the walls of sepulchres at Ebethias 
and Beni Hassan, in upper Egypt, and 
the latter contains an illustration of a 
kind of rude loom ; linen, in fact, ap¬ 
pears to have been the only clothing 
in Egypt until after the Christian era. 
The Egyptians exported their “ linen- 
yarn ” and u fine linen ,1 to Israel m 
the days of Solomon (2 Chron. i. 14, 
and Prov. vii. 7), their u fine linen ” to 
Tyre (Ezek. xxvii. 7), and the same 
fabric to Greece at the time of Herodo¬ 
tus ; and under the Roman emperors 
they continued famous for the manu¬ 
factured linen and export of flax ; ^nd, 
indeed, up to this period linen was the 
chief article of clothing in all the 
countries west of the Indus. The 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


25 7 


material of which the mummy-cloths 
consist woo long a qucestio vexata 
among the learned; but the late Mr. 
Thompson, of Clitheroe, has set all 
disputation at rest by his microscopic 
investigations, which proved that they 
were all linen fabrics. 

We must now conclude this byssus 
of the ancients was linen. It will be 
seen on comparing flax, whether in 
the fibre or the yarn, appears in the 
form of transparent tubes, straight 
and cylindrical, and articulated or 
jointed like the sugar cane, although 
the tenacity of the fibre is not thereby 
impaired. The cotton filaments are 
flattened cylinders, twisted like a cork¬ 
screw and without joints. It is a 
curious fact that although the majority 
of the mummy-cloths are of coarse 
texture, some of them have been 
been found of a fabric rivaling the 
finest cambric; while at the present 
day, the flax of Egypt imported for 
our manufacture, is the coarsest flax 
of commerce, and cannot be made into 
yarn, even with our modern ingenious 
mechanism, fitted for weaving into a 
web one-third as fine as the Egyptians 
with the rudest appliances, upwards 
of 3,000 years ago, prepared as wrap¬ 
pers for their dead. It is probable that 
the culture and manufacture of flax 
were carried from the East to Europe 
by the Phoenician merchants or the 
Greek colonists of Egypt and Syria; 
and in Homer we find allusions to the 
manufacture of linen in Greece. Once 
introduced into Europe, it rapidly 
spread over countries whose soil and 
climate were congenial to its growth. 
The history and tales of every part 
of the continent teem with reference 
to it, as one of the most general and 
best understood departments of domes¬ 
tic routine; and at the present day 
there is scarcely a nook of that conti¬ 


nent where the plant is not grown to 
a greater or less extent. The greatest 
development of the culture is between 
the forty-fourth and sixtieth parallels 
of latitude. North of these, the cli¬ 
mate is against its success, and south 
of them, although some is grown, the 
fibre is generally of such indifferent 
qualities that the attention of the 
cultivator is chiefly directed to the 
production of the seed. 


SPICES. 


Nutmeg is the kernel of a small, 
smooth, pear-shaped fruit that grows 
on a tree in the Molucca Islands and 
other parts of the East. The trees 
commence bearing in their seventh 
year, and continue fruitful until they 
are nearly seventy or eighty years old. 
Around the nutmeg or kernel is a 
bright, brown shell. 

This shell has a soft scarlet covering 
which when flattened or dried, is 
known as mace. The best nutmegs 
are solid, and emit oil when pricked 
with a pin. 

Ginger is the root of a shrub first 
known in Asia, and now cultivated in 
the West Indies and Sierra Leone. 
The stem grows three or four feet 
high, and dies every year. There are 
two varieties of ginger, the white and 
black, caused by taking more or less 
care in selecting and preparing the 
roots, which are always dug in winter, 
when the stems are withered. The 
white is the best. 

Cinnamon is the inner bark of a tree, 
a native of Ceylon, that grows from 
twenty to thirty feet in height, and 
lives to be centuries old. 

Cloves — native to the Molucca Is¬ 
lands, and so called from resemblance 
to a nail (clavis). The East Indians 
call them u changkuk, 11 from the ■‘"hi- 








258 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


nese u techenki” (fragrant nails). They 
grow on a straight smooth-barked tree 
about forty feet high. Cloves are not 
fruits, but blossoms, gathered before 
they are quite unfolded. 

Allspice — a berry so called because 
it combines the odor of several spices 
— grows abudantly on the beautiful 
allspice tree or bay-berry tree, native 
of South America and the West 
Indies. A single tree has been known 
to produce over one hundred and fifty 
pounds of berries. They are purple 
when ripe. 


PARIAN ORNAMENTS. 

Those beautiful small white figures 
— single and in groups — exposed in 
the show windows of large china-ware 
stores, and on the mantel-pieces of 
parlors are called u Parian marble,” 
but they are formed of the same ma¬ 
terial as fine unglazed porcelain. In 
softness of tint it rivals the finest 
marble employed in statuary. It is 
composed of nearly two-thirds of 
ground flint, one-third of fine Chinese 
clay and very minute portions of lime, 
soda, potash, magnesia, and a trace 
of iron. These are very carefully 
calcined, ground, sifted and rendered 
perfectly impalpable. It is not mould¬ 
ed from a doughy mass, but formed 
into a creamy consistency (as in the 
finest porcelain) and poured into the 
moulds. The models of the figures 
are made by skillful sculptors, and 
from these moulds are taken. The 
parian liquid, when poured into the 
moulds, solidifies, and is afterwards 
slightly baked, until it becomes firm, 
when the moulds are taken to pieces, 
the casts liberated, and the rough 
parts on their surfaces carefully re¬ 
moved. A single mould cannot be 
made to cast a single figure — it is the 


product of several. The head, the 
limbs, the drapery, have so many 
curves that only a part of the figure 
is produced by one mouldy and some 
groups require no less than fifty. 

After the moulding and first baking, 
the most difficult part has still to be 
performed, namely, the building up 
and keeping the separate parts in per¬ 
fect form. All the pieces have to be 
cemented together, and the joints so 
obliterated that they cannot be per- 
ceived. 

There is also another source of 
trouble to the parian artist — the 
shrinking of the material in drying, 
owing to the great amount of water 
it contains, and which is driven off 
thereby. If one part of a figure 
shrinks more than its corresponding 
part, it may produce a wry-necked 
Venus, or a hunch-backed Adonis. 
And even when a figure is all made 
up, and its parts nicely proportioned 
and fitted, they have all to be further 
dried and finally annealed in an oven, 
in w'hich processes they are liable to 
be injured in their form by unequal 
heating, whereby they may be twisted 
and cracked. There is, therefore, a 
vast amount of waste and breakage 
in the manufacture of parian orna¬ 
ments, and this is one reason why 
they are so dear. But when the grace¬ 
fulness of their execution and their 
beautiful appearance are taken into 
consideration, rivalling as they do the 
finest chiseled marbles, they are, after 
all, not dear, for the same work, in 
marble, could not be produced at a 
hundred times their cost. 

Parian manufactures, as a new 
branch of the ornamental arts, are 
hailed by lovers of the beautiful, be¬ 
cause such works are now brought 
within the reach of many, and have 
an elevating influence. 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


259 


WHAT IS JUTE? 


Jute is a fibrous plant that grows to 
a high stalk varying from six to twelve 
feet high. It is raised in the low-lands 
of the East Indies. The jute planta¬ 
tions are operated somewhat on the 
system of rice plantations. The water 
used for flooding purposes is taken 
from rudely constructed reservoirs 
filled by the melting snow of the 
Himalaya Mountains. The plant is 
kept growing in about eighteen inches 
of water, which prevents the parching 
of a tropical sun from destroying it. 
When the stalk has attained its growth 
it is pulled up by the roots or cut off 
near the roots. It is then laid out in 
hales like wheat or rye, and prepared 
for market. 

The bark is removed. The root is 
cut off where it is pulled up with the 
stalk and where the root is not origin¬ 
ally kept, the hard, lower end is cut 
off and thrown into a class commer¬ 
cially known as jute butts. The re¬ 
mainder is then assorted with regard 
to length, strength, fineness and lustre 
of fibre. The first quality is a beauti¬ 
ful, clear, long fibre, much of it resem¬ 
bling in appearance blonde hair. This 
is especially used for chignons, but it 
is also used in Scotland in the manu¬ 
facture of fine jute cloths. Canvas for 
linings, also cloths for making cheap 
duster coats, and a variety of goods of 
that description are made in Dundee, 
Scotland, of a mixture of fine jute 
and linen or cotton. The goods into 
which the finer grades are manufac¬ 
tured in Scotland are too numerous to 
mention. Many kinds are sold as all 
linen, when actually composed of jute 
and linen. These mixed cloths are 
called “ union cloths.” It is a singular 
fact that we are not making any of 
them in this country. 


The second and third qualities of jute 
are determined by inferiority of length, 
strength, fineness and color of fibre. 
Some planters and merchants in the 
East Indies have four qualities of jute. 
It will thus be understood wherein the 
fibres commercially known as jute 
butts differ. The one is the stalk it¬ 
self, which is all fibre except the thin, 
scaly and easily removed bark; the 
other is a harder, coarser fibre near the 
root, yvhich is discolored by the water 
that becomes dark after being subjects 
ed to the intense heat of the sun in the 
tropics. 

Jute rejections are simply a mixture 
of all kinds of jute scraps—frequently 
fine jute gets tangled until unfit for 
first, second or third class, and fre¬ 
quently pieces of butts; in fact, they 
are exactly what the name implies — 
rejections of jute and jute butts. Those 
who use jute in this country will not 
buy rejection. They are used the same 
as butts for the coarsest matting, for 
heavy bagging and for paper stock. 
They bring in the market about the 
same price as butts. 


OLD NEWSPAPERS. 

The antiquity of newspapers dates 
as far back as 691 B. C., when the 
Acta Diurna was issued at Rome, 
Venice, in Modern Europe, published 
the first newspaper, the Notizic Scritte, 
about 1536. The oldest newspaper ex¬ 
tant is probably the Gazette de France, 
which appeared first in April, 1631. 
It was edited by a physician — M. 
Renandot. Two years later Sir Roger 
L’Estrange published the first real 
newspaper in England, under the title 
of the Public Intelligencer. The Ga¬ 
zette appeared some three years later. 
Previous to the appearance of these 
regular newspapers broad sheets of 








260 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


news were from time to time pub¬ 
lished, eleven of which were circulated 
during the time of the civil war. In 
1660 an act prohibiting the publication 
of newspapers and pamphlets except 
under censorship, was passed; but in 
1659 this act was abolished. The parent 
of English literary prints, “ Mercurius 
Librarius, 11 was published April 9, 
1680. The first morning paper, the 
Daily Courant, appeared March 11, 
1702. In Scotland the first number of 
the Mercurius Politicus was printed, 
by order of Cromwell, on Oct. 26, 1653. 
In Ireland the Dublin News Letter 
made its appearance in 1686. The let¬ 
ters of Junius began to appear in the 
Public Advertiser in 1767. The Lon¬ 
don Times appeared in 1785. At the 
present time France possesses about 
1,640 newspapers, Germany about 
1,400. Spain publishes 200. The first 
newspaper published in America was 
the Boston News Letter, the first num¬ 
ber being dated April 24, 1704. It 
was printed on a half sheet of paper 
twelve inches by eight, with two col¬ 
umns on each page. It was published 
and probably edited by John Campbell, 
postmaster of Boston, a Scotchman. 
The Boston Gazette appeared Dec. 21, 
1799, and on the next day was followed 
by the American Weekly Mercuric, 
from the printing office of William 
Bradford, at Philadelphia. In 1794 
the Commercial Advertiser appeared in 
New York, and in 1801 it was followed 
by the Evening Post . In 1828, the 
number of newspapers in the United 
States had increased to 852, with a 
yearly issue of 68,117,000 copies. In 
1832 the first penny paper, the Sun, 
was founded in New York by Benja¬ 
min H. Day. In 1835 the New York 
Herald appeared, entering the arena as 
a penny sheet, afterward raised to two. 
The number of newspapers at present 


in circulation throughout the Union is 
estimated at about 5,000, being at the 
rate of one per 8,000 inhabitants. 


THE DEATH OF FOUR GREAT MEN. 


The four conquerors who occupy 
the most conspicuous places in the his¬ 
tory of the world, are Alexander. Han¬ 
nibal, Caesar, and Bonaparte. 

Alexander, after having climbed the 
dizzy height of his ambition, with his 
temples bound with chaplets dipped 
in the blood of millions, looked down 
on a conquered world and wept that 
there was no world for him to conquer, 
set a city on fire, and died in a scene of 
debauch. 

Hannibal, after having, to the aston¬ 
ishment and consternation of Rome, 
passed the Alps, and having put to 
flight the armies of the mistress of the 
world, and stripped “three bushels of 
gold rings from the fingers of her 
slaughtered knights,’ 1 and made her 
foundations quake, fled from his coun¬ 
try, being hated by those who had 
once exultingly united his name to 
that of their God, and called him Han- 
ni Baal, and died at last by poison ad¬ 
ministered by his own hand, unla¬ 
mented and unwept, in a foreign 
land. 

Caesar, after having conquered eight 
hundred cities, and dyeing his gar¬ 
ments in the blood of one million of 
his foes, after having pursued to death 
the only rival he had on earth, was 
miserably assassinated by those he con¬ 
sidered his nearest friends, and in that 
very place the attainment of which 
had been his greatest ambition. 

Bonaparte, whose mandates kings 
and popes obeyed, after having filled 
the earth with the terror of his name, 
after having deluged Europe with 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


261 


tears, and clothed the world in sack¬ 
cloth, closed his days in lonely ban¬ 
ishment, almost literally exiled from 
the world, yet where he could some¬ 
times see his country’s banner waving 
over the deep, but which did not and 
could not bring him aid. 


THE LINEN MANUFACTURE. 


Probably the first textile spun and 
woven into cloth was wool, as it would 
evidently suggest itself in a raw state 
as well adpated to this purpose ; but 
the manufacture of linen dates from 
the earliest history ; at least the earl¬ 
iest written records speak of it as well 
known. It was old in the time of He¬ 
rodotus and the oldest Egyptian mum¬ 
mies are swathed in it. Among that 
singularly superstitious people it seems 
to have borne a sacred character, as 
their priests were forbidden to enter 
the temples clothed in any other than 
linen garments, and their dead were 
always shrouded in it. 

On account probably of the superior 
ease with which cotton can be pre¬ 
pared for the loom, the manufacture 
of linen, in this country, does not 
seem to have attained the proportions 
which its value and that of the plant 
from which it is derived entitles it to. 
The extensive application of machin¬ 
ery to its manufacture is of quite a 
recent date, and even now much of the 
Irish linen is manufactured, from the 
time it is pulled to its transformation 
into cloth, by hand. 

Massachusetts seems to have led the 
way in the manufacture of linen. In 
1632 it seems that the people of this 
colony had generally turned their at¬ 
tention to cattle raising, importing 
from England most of their clothing, 
and all of the finer sort. In 1640 the 


Assembly took the matter in hand and 
decreed that: 

u The Court taking into serious Con¬ 
sideration the absolute Necessity for 
the Raising of the Manufacture of 
Linnen cloths, doth declare that it is 
the Intent of this Court that there 
shall be an order settled about it, and 
therefore doth require the Magistrates 
and Deputies of the several Towns to 
acquaint the townsmen therewith, and 
to make enquiry what seed is in every 
Town, what men and women are 
skillful in the braking, spinning, and 
weaving, what means for the provid¬ 
ing of Wheels ; and to consider with 
those skillful in that Manufacture, and 
what course may be taken for teaching 
the boys and girls in all Towns the 
spinning of the yarn, and to return to 
the next Court their several and joint 
advice about this Thing. The like 
consideration to be had for the spin¬ 
ning and weaving of Cotton Wool.” 

The description of cloth to which 
this order applies appears to have been 
a mixture of linen and cotton or linen 
and wool. In the same year an order 
of the Court offered a “bounty of 
three-pence on every shilling’s worth 
of linen, woollen, and cotton cloth, 
according to its valewation, for the 
incuragement of the Manifacture.” 

In 1662 the Assembly of Virginia 
enacted laws for the promotion of in¬ 
dustry in the making of cloth and 
raising the materials. Flax seed was 
imported from England and distribu¬ 
ted to each county and bounties off¬ 
ered for raising it. Two pounds of 
tobacco were offered for every pound 
of flax or hemp prepared for the 
spindle, three pounds for every yard 
of cloth a yard wide, and five pounds 
for every yard of woolen cloth. Ev¬ 
ery tithable person was required, under 
a penalty of fifty pounds of tobacco, 






202 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


(then the great staple of the colony) 
to produce yearly two pounds of 
dressed flax or hemp. 

The industrious Dutch matrons and 
maids of New Netherlands — New 
York — as early as 1670, are described 
by Denton as great manufacturers of 
linen. He says : “ Every one makes 
their own linen and a great part of 
their woolen cloth for their ordinary 
wearing.” In New Jersey in 1667, 
or soon after, Quakers from York¬ 
shire and London made linen cloth, 
and in Pennsylvania in 1693 and 
Delaware at about the same time one 
of the principal employments of their 
women was the spinning and weaving 
of linen. Scotch-Irish carried on the 
business extensively in New Hamp¬ 
shire in 1719. The first linen factory 
was established in 44 Long *Acre ”— Tre- 
mont street — Boston, in 1737. 


TABLE SETS EXTRAORDINARY. 

At a shop in London in 1745 was 
exhibited a common Barcelona nut¬ 
shell, holding a tea-table, tea board, a 
dozen cups and saucers, with sugar 
dish and slop basin, a bottle, a funnel, 
fifteen drinking glasses, five punch 
bowls, ten rummels, a pestle and mor¬ 
tar, and two sets of ninepins — all of 
polished ivory, exquisitely fashioned, 
and to be easily seen without the aid of 
44 optic glasses.” The ingenious artist, 
we are told, was a poor, penurious mor¬ 
tal, who being, by the cruel destiny of 
the planets, driven to the verge of des¬ 
truction, had hit upon this method of 
saving himself. His little exhibition 
was, however, outdone, by the watch¬ 
maker named Boverick, dwelling near 
the New Exchange, hard by. For the 
charge of one shilling he showed his 
visitors half a cherry-stone, from 
which he took a quadrille table, twelve 


chairs with skeleton backs, a looking- 
glass, two dozen plates, six dishes, 
twelve spoons, a dozen knives and 
forks, two salts, and a lady and gen¬ 
tleman sitting down at a table and 
waited upon by a footman. 

Boverick also produced a camel that 
could pass through the eye of a middle 
sized needle, and a pair of steel scissors r 
warranted to cut a large horse-hair, of 
such dimensions that six pairs might 
be wrapped in the wing of a fly. 

Then came a chain of two hundred 
links, with padlock and a key, attached 
to a flea, the lot weighing one-third of 
a grain ; a four-wheeled ivory chariot,, 
with its driver and the flea serving for 
a steed, weighed barely a grain ; and a 
crane-necked carriage, with wheels 
turning properly on their axles, carry¬ 
ing four passengers, two footmen, a 
coachman sitting on his box with a dog 
between his legs, driving six ivory hors¬ 
es, one of the leaders bearing a postil¬ 
ion, the whole affair so light that a 
single flea could set it moving. 


WINDOWS. 

Windows were originally openings 
for ventilation. The word is derived 
from the Welch wyntdor , wind-door 
afterwards used for light protected 
by mica, oiled linen, horn, paper, or 
glass. Strabo speaks of transparent 
stones for windows which were ex¬ 
ported. Pliny also mentions horn 
windows for houses. Stone and glass 
windows were introduced into England 
either by Wulfrid, Bishop of Worces¬ 
ter, or Benedict Biscopins in 736. In 
the time of Edward I. were trefoil 
openings within triangles. In the 
reign of Richard II., they were subdi¬ 
vided by upright midlions dividing the 
window into lights. In succeeding 
centuries the molding grew more light 












THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


263 


and graceful. It was long before the 
cloisters were closed with windows, 
and then not entirely, for spaces were 
left for access of fresh air. It is said, 
that the windows of Manilla in the 
Philippine Islands have sliding frames 
fitted with concha or plates of semi¬ 
transparent oysters which admit an 
imperfect light, but are impervious to 
the sunbeams. 


CONCERT PITCH. 

The standard or concert pitch nas 
long been a vexed question, although 
now pretty well settled. For a long 
series of years prior to 1839, it had 
been gradually rising much to the in¬ 
convenience of public singers. The C 
tuning-fork in use in 1699 made 489 
vibrations in a second, while in 1859 
the number of vibrations had increased 
to 538. Mr. Hullah in 1842, and under 
the sanction of the Committee of 
Council on Education in England as a 
public instructor, fixed a standard of 
512, which had special convenience as 
being a power of 2. In 1858 the Im¬ 
perial Government of France fixed it 
at 522. It was agreed on all sides that 
the then existing opera-pitch of 546 
was too high and painful to soprano 
singers. A high authority, Sir John 
Herschel, strongly recommended 512, 
but instrumental performers stated that 
while they could lower the pitch to 
528, even at that, some of them would 
be compelled to get new instruments. 
The Committee of the Society of Arts 
therefore fixed the standard at 528. 


RESINS. 

The resins best known to commerce, 
and used extensively in medicine and 
several of the mechanic arts, are nine 


in number, and are known as copal, 
lac, amber, dammar, common rosin, 
elemi, sandarac, mastic and caramba 
wax. All these resins can be reduced 
to powder, and all can be dissolved by 
a union with acids, oils or alcoholic 
preparations. Gum copal is the con¬ 
crete juice of a tree growing in certain 
sections of South America and the 
East Indies. The substance when pure 
is hard, shining, transparent, citron- 
colored and inodorous. It is not solu¬ 
ble in water or spirits, but may be 
dissolved in linseed oil, when sub¬ 
mitted to a heat a little less than suffi¬ 
cient to boil or decompose the oil. 
When this solution is diluted with 
spirits of turpentine, it forms a beau¬ 
tiful transparent varnish. 

Shellac, or, more properly, lac, is a 
resinous substance, obtained mainly 
from the Ficus Indica, or Banyan-tree. 
It is composed of five different, but 
very similar kinds, each of which is 
united with a small quantity of for¬ 
eign substances, particularly a red 
coloring matter. Stick lac is the com¬ 
pound in its natural state, incrusting 
small twigs. When broken off and 
boiled in water, it loses its red color, 
and is called seed lac. When melted, 
strained and spread into thin plates, it 
is shell lac. United with ivory black 
or vermillion, it forms red or black 
sealing wax ; when lac is dissolved in 
alcohol or other solvents, and sub¬ 
mitted to different methods of prepara¬ 
tion, it constitutes various kinds of 
varnishes and lacquers. Lac is readily 
dissolved by a union with caustic soda. 

Amber is a yellowish resin, and res¬ 
embles copal. It is found on the sea¬ 
shore and frequently on alluvial soils 
with beds of lignite. It is capable of 
receiving very fin6 polish, and is used 
for ornamental purposes — to adorn 
pipes, walking sticks, etc. It is also 









204 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the basis for a fine varnish. • By fric¬ 
tion it readily becomes electric. 

Amber will not dissolve in alcohol, 
but it yields to the action of concen¬ 
trated sulphuric acid, which will dis¬ 
solve all resins except caramba wax. 
The union with the sulphuric acid 
gives dammar a brilliant red tint, but 
to other resins a dark brown color. 

Dammar is obtained from certain 
trees indigenous to the East Indies : 
among others the dammara and the 
dammar pine. It is principally used 
for making varnish. Dammar dis¬ 
solves easily in sulphide of carbon, oil 
of turpentine, linseed oil and benzole. 

Common rosin is the product of the 
Southern pine, and is readily soluble 
in alcohol and the essential oils. 

Elemi is a concrete substance ob¬ 
tained from several species of trees 
growing in the tropics, but having 
much the same appearance, and un¬ 
doubtedly allied in origin. It is used 
by the medical profession in ointments 
and plasters, and by mechanics as a 
base for the manufacture of varnish. 
This resin dissolves with difficulty in 
alcohol and linseed oil, but gives way 
under the action of oil of turpentine 
and benzole. 

Mastic exudes from the mastic tree, 
which grows on the borders of the 
Mediterranean Sea. It runs freely 
when an incision is made in the body 
of the tree, but not otherwise. It is 
of a yellowish-white color, is semi¬ 
transparent, of faint smell, and is used 
as an aromatic and an astringent. It 
is also used by painters as an ingre¬ 
dient in drying varnishes. 

Sandarac is the product of a tree 
growing in Barbary. It is obtained 
in what is known as transparent tears, 
of a white color, and is used princi¬ 
pally for incense and the manufacture 
of varnish, and when pulverized and 


mixed with other substances in a 
pounce, as a perfume. 

The following resins will become 
pasty before melting : amber, lac, ele¬ 
mi, sandarac and mastic; the others 
will become liquid at once. 

Ammonia will slowly dissolve copal, 
mastic and sandarac ; but on the other 
principal resins, it has very little 
effect. 


JOURNALISM TWO THOUSAND YEARS 

AGO. 

There seems to have been a necessity 
since time immemorial among at least 
half civilized nations to bring events ol 
importance to the knowledge of the 
people by the medium of writing. To 
this purpose answered the hieroglyphic 
inscriptions of the Egyptians, the 
tombs of Babylon, covered with Assyr¬ 
ian, and the well known Marmor Ra¬ 
dium. 

The first Roman journal, over two 
thousand years ago, appeared only 
once a year. This paper, intended es¬ 
pecially to be read by the public, was 
known by the title of Annales Maxi - 
mui. The editor of this paper was 
Pontifex Maxius, whose duty it was to 
chronicle all the important events of 
the year. The news was written on 
white wooden tablets and attached to 
the residences of the citizens. It must 
have been a very curious sight to see 
the old Romans crowding around 
these tablets to get a look at the latest 
news. But the thirst after knowledge 
and the curiosity of the people grew 
rapidly, and in such a way that the 
government — the only issuer of the 
journal — found itself obliged to issue 
a daily. It is very interesting to know 
that some of these journals, having 
reached 2,044 years, are still in exis¬ 
tence. The name of this journal was 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


265 


Aeta Populi Romani Diurni, and ap¬ 
peared daily either as “ Album ” (i. e., 
with the tablets hung out in public), 
or the contents were written with red 
chalk on the walls of the houses. The 
contents of this journal comprised 
what would be classed as daily news in 
our modern papers ; from the want of 
the necessary material, political arti¬ 
cles were not to be had. Nevertheless, 
according to the views of the Roman 
Government, it was a true journal, and 
intended as reading matter for the 
public, which might also be inferred 
from the fact that the archives of 
State were carved in bronze and acces¬ 
sible to the public. Perhaps it would 
be of interest to peruse a copy of a 
verbal translation of the oldest jour¬ 
nal known, issued 168 years before the 
birth of Christ. u Consul Sicinius was 
the acting Judge to-day. There was a 
heavy thunderstorm, and the light¬ 
ning split an oak at the foot of the 
hills of Yeli. In a hostelry, at the 
foot of the hills of James, there was a 
fight, in which the landlord was badly 
wounded. Titinius punished some 
butchers on account of their selling 
meat which had not been inspected; 
the money thus paid was used to 
erect a chapel to the Goddess Laverea. 
The broker Ausidius fled from town 
to-day, taking money with him be¬ 
longing to other people; he was 
caught, and had to refund the money. 
The brigand Demiphon, who was cap¬ 
tured by officer Nerva, has been cruci¬ 
fied to-day. The flotilla from Astia 
arrived to-day.” 

You can see from this that it was in 
olden times pretty much the same as 
in our days ; we only wish that our 
officials would attend to the butchers 
as well as Titinius did. It must be of 
interest to journalists to know that 
Julius Caesar, the greatest of all Ro¬ 


mans, paid special attention to jour¬ 
nalism. He saw the necessity of 
instructing his people in everything 
occurring in the State, and we find 
this quotation in Suetonius : 

“Julius Caesar, as soon as he had 
entered his public office, caused not 
only to be written, but also spread 
among the people, the proceedings of 
the Senate.” 

This was the first political paper, 
and, as it contained news about build¬ 
ings, births, deaths, executions and 
anecdotes, it can be likened very much 
to our modern papers. It seems in¬ 
credible, but it can be proved, that 
already in the olden times there were 
stenographers who took down the 
speeches made in the Senate or in pub¬ 
lic. They were called “ Notarri,” and 
we find a place in Suetonius where 
Augustus is angry because the stenog¬ 
raphers reported the speech of Caesar 
for Metellus in a very imperfect man¬ 
ner. There must have been reporters, 
judging from a letter of Cicero to 
Coelius; also, private reporters who 
gathered the news and sent them by 
the “cursus publicus,” an institute 
similar to our mails, throughout the 
province. 

You can see from this that Atciba’s 
saying : “ There is nothing new under 
the sun,” is verified once more. 


THE DAYS BEFORE COAL. 

There can be no doubt, for it is an 
unquestionable fact, that the coal beds 
of England are the real natural source 
of its physical wealth. Without coal, 
it never would have been a manufact¬ 
uring country ; without it no cotton 
factories would ever have been erected, 
and no steamships would ever have 
floated on its waters. It is simply be¬ 
cause it has the largest coal fields in 







266 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Europe, that it is the greatest manu¬ 
facturing nation in that quarter of 
the world. But it was very difficult 
to introduce the use of coal among the 
old English people. 

It was first used in that country 
about six centuries ago, and at that 
time the Englishmen would not use 
the sooty fuel in their houses. I f did 
not suit the fire-places or the domestic 
habits of the people ; but it was found 
well adapted for the blacksmith and 
the lime-burner. Only the layers near 
the surface and in coal fields adjacent 
to rivers or seas, were first opened ; 
but when the demand increased the 
miners dived more deeply into the 
bowels of the earth, and boldly 
worked the coal wherever it was to be 
found. When the mines became deep 
the miners were sadly perplexed how 
to get rid of the water; and it was 
not till the steam engine came to 
their aid that they fully mastered this 
difficulty. But the prejudices of the 
users were as difficult to surmount as 
the perils of the miners. A citizen of 
London was once tried and executed 
for burning sea coal, in opposition to 
a stringent law passed in respect to 
that subject; but even long after such 
intolerance as this had passed away, 
coal was tabooed in good society. La¬ 
dies had a theory that the black abom¬ 
ination spoiled their complexion; and 
it was for a long time* a point of eti¬ 
quette not to sit in a room warmed by 
a coal fire, or to eat meat roasted by 
such means. Prejudice unquestionably 
had much to do with these objections ; 
but it was not all prejudice, for the 
almost total absence of proper ar¬ 
rangements for supplying fresh air, 
and removing smoke and foul air, 
rendered the burning coal a very dirty 
and disagreeable companion in a 
room. 


Wood was then the principal 
fuel used in England, the forests but 
scantily supplied the wants of the 
people. Turf or peat was also em¬ 
ployed in some districts as it still is in 
Ireland and in the Highlands of 
Scotland ; but in all England wood 
is at present unknown as a domes¬ 
tic fuel — coal has entirely supersed¬ 
ed it. 


DELICATE TEXTILE FABRICS. 

Those who have read that charm¬ 
ing romance by Sir Walter Scott, 
“The Talisman,” cannot fail to re¬ 
member the vivid pictures which he 
gives us of the state of the arts 
amongst the Saracens, and of the 
high degree of perfection which they 
had attained in some of its branches. 
In the science of medicine it is claimed 
that they had attained a degree of 
knowledge and skill which put to 
shame the efforts of their more 
clumsy and ignorant Western contem¬ 
poraries. In the manufacture of deli¬ 
cate textile fabrics, they had certainly 
reached a wonderful degree of perfec¬ 
tion ; for we know from other testi¬ 
mony besides that of Scott, that their 
fine gauze veils were so perfect and so 
delicate that, while they did not in the 
slightest degree obscure the clearness 
of vision of the wearers, they com¬ 
pletely excluded the fine dust of the 
desert, which is so annoying to travel¬ 
ers, and withal so penetrating that the 
most closely wrapped packages are not 
proof against it. These veils were so 
delicate and light, that, when skill¬ 
fully thrown on the air, they floated 
off as if possessed of no more weight 
than thistle-down. And yet such was 
the perfection to which this same 
people had brought the art of sword 
making, that Scott represents Saladin 







267 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


as throwing such a veil into the air, 
and dividing it in two with a stroke 
of his cimiter, the separate pieces 
floating off in different directions. 
With the same weapon he is said to 
have cut in two a light feather pillow, 
leaving the separate halves standing 
upright, as if they had remained un¬ 
touched. 

Although these feats find a distant 
record only in the pages of romance, 
they are said to be fully vouched for 
by contemporary historians, and so 
far at least as delicate fabrics are con¬ 
cerned, they are almost equalled by 
the spindles and looms of Hindostan. 
The Indian weaver, working in moist 
and underground apartments, not only 
secures for the material in which he 
works those conditions which are 
necessary for the production of the 
most delicate fabrics, but attains in 
his own person that morbidly sensi¬ 
tive nervous condition which confers 
upon him the delicate tactile power 
capable of producing a fabric which 
from its exceeding delicacy has been 
called “woven wind.'’ Samples of 
these fabrics were exhibited at the 
World’s Fair in 1851; and so fine 
were they, that a whole piece when 
folded to a full width could be drawn 
through an ordinary sized wedding 
ring. Even by machinery, the most 
wonderful results have been attained ; 
although it may be confessed that the 
best looms of Manchester have not 
been able to equal the work of the 
native East Indian operative. A sin¬ 
gle pound of cotton has been spun 
into yarn which measured over two 
hundred miles,— a degree of tenuity 
which almost rivals that attained by 
the most ductile metals. We may 
add, that so greatly is the value of the 
material enhanced during this opera¬ 
tion, that a pound of cotton, which is 


worth eighty-eight cents in its crude 
state, is worth one hundred and 
twenty-five dollars when converted 
into such yarn as we have described. 

But by far the most wonderful at¬ 
tempt to rival the work of the East¬ 
ern artists was that made by an officer 
of engineers residing at Munich, who 
conceived the ingenious idea of employ¬ 
ing the caterpillar itself, not only as 
the spinner but the weaver. Having 
made a paste of the leaves of the 
plants on which the species of cat¬ 
erpillar that he employs feeds, he 
spreads it thinly over a stone, or other 
flat surface, of the required size. He 
then, with a camel-hair pencil dipped 
in olive-oil, draws the pattern he 
wishes to leave open. This stone is 
then placed in an inclined position, 
and a considerable number of the cat¬ 
erpillars are placed at the bottom. A 
peculiar species is chosen which spins 
a long web; and the animals com¬ 
mence at the bottom, eating and spin¬ 
ning their way to the top, carefully 
avoiding every part touched by the oil, 
but devouring every other part of the 
paste. The extreme lightness of these 
veils, combined with some strength, is 
truly surprising. One of them, meas¬ 
uring 26^ by 17 inches, weighed about 
1.51 grains, a degree of lightness 
which will appear more strongly by 
contrast with other fabrics. One 
square yard of the substance of which 
these veils are made weighs four grains 
and one-third ; whilst one square yard 
of silk gauze weighs 137 grains, and 
one square yard of the finest net in 
market 262^- grains. The finest cam¬ 
bric muslin weighs 551 grains per sq. 
yard, and the colored muslin used for 
ladies’ dresses 788 grains. These fig¬ 
ures enable us to form an idea of the 
extreme tenuity of these caterpillar 
veils. 






208 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


THE GLOSS ON SILK. 


u The method of giving an artificial 
gloss to the woven pieces of silk,” 
says the Druggist’s Circular , u was in¬ 
vented in 1663. The discovery of the 
method was purely accidental. Octa¬ 
vio Mey, a merchant of Lyons, being 
one day deep in meditation, mechanic¬ 
ally put a small bunch of silk threads 
into his mouth and began to chew 
them. On taking them out again in 
his hand he was struck by the pecul¬ 
iar luster which they had acquired, 
and was not a little astonished to find 
that this luster continued to adhere to 
the threads even after they had be¬ 
come dry. He at once saw that in this 
fact was a secret worth unraveling, and 
being a man of ingenuity, he applied 
himself to the study of the question. 
The result of his experiments was the 
procede de lustrage, or ‘glossing 
method. 1 The manner of imparting 
the artificial gloss has, like all other 
details of the weaving art, undergone 
certain changes in the course of years. 
At present, it is done in this wise: 
Two rollers revolving on their axes 
are set up a few feet from the ground, 
and at about ten yards, in a straight 
line, from each other. Round the first 
of these rollers is wound the piece of 
silk, of twenty, forty, or one hundred 
yards in length, as the case may be. 
Ten yards of the silk are then un¬ 
wound, and fixed by means of a brass 
rod in a groove on the second roller, 
care being taken to stretch the silk 
between the two cylinders as tightly 
as possible. A workman with a thin 
blade of metal in his hand daintily 
covers the uppermost side of the silk 
(that which will form the inside of 
the piece) with a coating of gum. On 
the floor under the outstretched silk is 
a small tramway, upon which runs a 


sort of tender filled with glowing 
coals. As fast as one man covers the 
silk with gum, another works the ten¬ 
der up and down, so as to dry the 
mucilage before it has had time to 
permeate the texture. This is a very 
delicate operation ; for if, on the one 
hand, the gum is allowed to run 
through the silk, or if, on the other, 
the coals are kept too long under one 
place, the piece is spoiled. In the 
first instance it would be stained be¬ 
yond all power of cleaning, and in 
the second, it would be burned. None 
but trusty workmen are confided with 
this task; and even with the most 
proved hands there is sometimes dam¬ 
age. When ten yards of the piece 
have been gummed and dried, they are 
rolled around the second cylinder aiid 
ten more are unwound. This is re¬ 
peated till the end. But the silk, with 
its coating of dried gum, is then stiff 
to the touch, and crackles like cream- 
laid note-paper when folded. To make 
it soft and pliant again, it is rolled 
anew, some six or seven times, under 
two different cylinders, one of which 
has been warmed by the introduction 
of hot coals inside, and this is suffic¬ 
ient to give it that bright new look 
which we all admire so much in fresh 
silk.” 


TURPENTINE. 

Turpentine is an oleo-resinous fluid 
which flows naturally or artificially 
from several species of trees, as pine, 
fir, pistaela, etc. Common turpentine 
is about the consistency of honey after 
it is separated from the comb; but 
there are several varieties which are 
more or less liquid and flowing in a 
state of nature. When distilled, the 
liquid is about the consistency of cider 
or vinegar. 

The tree from which turpentine is 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


26D 


obtained in this country is known as 
the long-leaved pine, or pitch. It 
abounds in North and South Carolina, 
Georgia, Alabama, and several of the 
other Southern States. It is found 
only in the original forest, and when 
once cut down is never reproduced 
in the same locality. If the land is 
not cultivated, the pine is followed by 
a growth of oak, and when the latter 
is cut down, it is succeeded by pine, 
but of a greatly inferior kind and qual¬ 
ity to the genuine. 

The wood of the first growth is very 
firm, the tree is tall and straight, and 
grows to a height of forty or fifty feet, 
and from three to five feet in diameter. 
It is without branches, except at the 
top, and bears a very trim and hand¬ 
some appearance. 

In its crude state, turpentine is 
often obtained by tapping the trunk 
about a foot from the parallel of the 
ground. The cutting is made with an 
axe at the side of a tree to the depth 
of six or eight inches at the outside, 
with a slope inward. In the incision 
a u pocket 11 is scooped out, capable of 
holding a quart of the turpentine, 
which is made to collect there by the 
process of scarifying the bark triangu¬ 
larly, with an angle leading to the 
pocket. The larger trees have as 
many as three or four of these cut¬ 
tings, it having been ascertained by 
experience that a strip of bark three 
inches wide between them will keep a 
tree alive and in good condition. 

ALUMINUM —ITS PROPERTIES AND 

USES. 

The discovery of this metal dates 
back only to 1827, when Wohler, a 
German chemist, succeeded in extract¬ 
ing it from clay. It is a white metal, 
not like silver, but having a bluish 
tinge. Its specific gravity is from 2.5 


to 2.67, according to its purdty. It is 
considerably lighter than flint glass, 
being, as seen above, only about two- 
and-a-half times heavier than water. 
Bulk for bulk it is four times as light 
as silver and little more than a quarter 
the weight of copper. It is nearly 
as hard as iron, but can be softened by 
annealing; has great rigidity and 
tenacity; can be turned, chased and 
filed with ease, never clogging the file ; 
and can be drawn into wire as fine as 
a hair and rolled or beaten into sheets 
whose thinness can be surpassed only 
by those from gold and silver. 

For mustard and egg spoons it 
w T ould be an excellent material, as, 
unlike silver, it is not affected by 
sulphureted hydrogen or other sulphu- 
reted compounds. It retains its lustre 
in the ordinary atmosphere and is not 
affected by boiling water, diluted sul¬ 
phuric, or strong nitric acid, which 
attacks silver, but has no action upon 
aluminum when cold, and it is not 
affected when plunged into melted 
niter, potass, or sulphuret of potas¬ 
sium, a test which even gold or 
platinum cannot withstand. It is dis¬ 
solved, however, in muriatic acid and 
has a powerful attraction for chlorine. 

It has been used in France and En¬ 
gland for ornamental purposes, as 
finger rings, brooches, chains, etc. A 
cup made of it, although very thin, 
was not indented by falling from the 
hand to the pavement. These pecu¬ 
liar properties would seem to make it 
a proper material for light field guns, 
cuirasses, helmets and coins, but for 
the cost of extracting it from its 
earthy base of argil or clay. 

When the inventive genius of man 
has discovered a cheap and rapid pro¬ 
cess of extracting aluminum, we may 
expect it to assume a much more im¬ 
portant position in the useful, as well 






270 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


as the ornamental arts, than it occu¬ 
pies at present. A beautiful com¬ 
pound is now manufactured in France 
and England, composed of aluminum 
10 and copper 90 parts. We have 
seen a paper cutter, the blade and 
handle made of this, which had a 

beautiful yellow or deep straw color, 
was elastic, tough, and of a very fine 

finish. Its color is more grateful to 
the eye than gold and its luster bril¬ 
liant. The earth metals, of which 
aluminum may be considered the head, 
will, in time, become as valuable for 
use as they are now for ornament or 
for the purpose of the chemist. 


TALLY, 


Tally-sticks with notches were used 
in ancient Egypt and by the Athenians, 
as a method of keeping their accounts, 
the name being from French tailler , to 
cut. In England they were long issued 
in lieu of certificates of indebtedness, to 
creditors of the State. In 1696 this 
species of security was at 40 to 60 per 
cent, discount, and bank-notes 20 per 
cent. Other records were formerly 
kept besides accounts on notched sticks, 
as almanacs in which red-letter days 
were signified by a large notch, ordi¬ 
nary days by small notches. The mode 
of keeping accounts by tallies was intro¬ 
duced into England by the Normans in 
1066. Seasoned sticks of hazel or 

willow were provided, and these were 
notched on the edge to represent the 

amount. Small notches represented 
pence; large, shillings; still larger, 
pounds; larger and wider were 10, 100, 
1,000 pounds. The stick was split 
longitudinally, one piece was given to 
the creditor and the other was laid away 
as a record. The voucher was com¬ 
pared with the record when an account 
was presented for payment. When 


paid, the tally and counter tally were 
tied up together and laid away, accumu¬ 
lating for a long series of years. In the 
reign of George III, the people were 
getting tired of this method of keeping 
accounts. It ceased about the year 
1826, and it puzzled the authorities 
what to do with them. They finally 
in 1834, burned them in a stove, which 
being over-heated set fire to the House 
of Lords and House of Commons. This 
ended the tally system. 


WHAT THE BLIND HATE DONE. 

The long list of the names of the 
blind who have been eminent in the 
various branches of learning, from the 
time of Diodatus, who lived fifty years 
before the Christian era, to the pres¬ 
ent time, has no parallel. The follow¬ 
ing are some of the names: 

Diodatus, of Asia Minor, celebrated 
for his learning in philosophy, geom¬ 
etry and music. 

Eusebius, also of Asia, who lived 
from 315 to 340, of the Christian era, 
became blind at five years of age ; died 
at twenty-five, and yet during so short 
a lifetime, this blind man, by his theo¬ 
logical writings, has come to us, and 
will go down to posterity, as one of 
the fathers of Christianity. 

Henry, the minstrel of Scotland, 
author of the poetic life of Wallace; 
born blind in 1361. 

Margaret, of Ravenna, born in 1505, 
blind at three months ; noted for her 
writings on theology and morals. 

Hermann Torrentius, of Switzer¬ 
land, born in 1520; author of history 
and poetical dictionary. 

Nicholas Sanderson, of Yorkshire, 
was born in 1685 ; learned in mathe¬ 
matics and astronomy, and wrote a 
work on algebra. 

Thomas Blacklock, D. D., of Scot- 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


271 


land, born in 1721; blind at six 
months; was celebrated for his learn- 
. mg in poetry, divinity, and music. 

Francis Huber, of Geneva, Switzer¬ 
land, born in 1750; wrote on natural 
science, bees, ants, and on education. 

John Milton was born in 1608, in 
London; author of “ Paradise Lost,” 
etc. 

John Metcalf, born in 1717, in En¬ 
gland ; road surveyor and contractor. 

John Gough was born in 1757, in 
-England ; blind at three years; wrote 
■on botany, natural philosophy, etc. 

David Macbeth, born in 1792, in 
Scotland ; learned in music and math- 
matics, and inventor of the string 
alphabet for the blind. 

M. Foucault was born in Paris, in 
1797; invented a writing apparatus 
for the blind. 

M. Knie, of Prussia, born blind; 
was director of an institution for the 
blind, and wrote on the education of 
the blind. 

Alexander Rodenback, of Belgium; 
born in 1786 ; a member of the Bel¬ 
gian Congress, and wrote several works 
on the blind and deaf and mute. 

Wm. H. Churchman, formerly super¬ 
intendent of the institution for the 
blind at Indianapolis, Ind., and author 
of architectural designs and reports 
of the institution. 

Rev. W. H. Milburn, born 1823; 
now in New York ; father and brother 
reside in Illinois; celebrated lecturer 
and preacher. 

BEADS. 

Glass beads originated with the 
Egyptians. Some have been found 
with hieroglyphic inscriptions, show¬ 
ing the date to be about 1500 B. C. 
Glass beads and bugles, for necklaces, 
were used by the Egyptians, and for 


net-work in the mummy wrappings. 
They have been long in use among 
Eastern nations for devotional pur¬ 
poses, and are worn by the Chinese and 
Tartar Budhists, as well as by the 
Turks and other nations. The Chinese 
rosary is composed of 108 beads of co¬ 
ral, and stones which are sometimes as 
large as pigeon’s eggs. The use of 
beads in the Christain Church is of 
great antiquity. They are mentioned 
also by St. Augustine, A. D. 366, and 
in the time of Caesar, by the Druids. 
They are principally manufactured in 
Europe. Large quantities are made in 
Birmingham, which are sold and used 
for doll’s eyes. Beads are made from 
tubes of glass of different colors; are 
drawn out to a great length and cut 
into small pieces of uniform length, 
which are then put in a heap with a 
mixture of sand and wood ashes, and 
stirred with a spatula until the cavities 
are filled. This mixture is then trans¬ 
ferred to an iron pan, suspended over a 
moderate fire, and stirred until the 
cylindrical bits of glass assume a smooth 
rounded form, after which, they are re¬ 
moved from the fire and their bores 
cleaned out, when they constitute beads. 


BELLOWS. 

Bellows were used in Egypt in the 
time of Thothmes III., 1490 B. C., and 
are represented on a tomb bearing the 
name of that Pharaoh. From a cut is 
shown leathern bags which were in¬ 
flated and compressed by men working 
the bellows with the feet and hands, 
throwing the weight on the bags alter¬ 
nately. One of the ancient forms of 
bellows was made of the skins of animals 
sewed up to form bags. Two such skins 
used alternately would give a continu¬ 
ous blast; this was the ancient Roman 
forge bellows. 







272 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


« BY HOOK OR BY CROOK.” 

The origin of this proverbial ex¬ 
pression is thus given in the Boston 
News-Letter of January, 1776: 

“ Hook and Crook were the names of 
two English judges at the beginning of 
the last century. They were both men 
of eminence in their profession, but not 
more remarkable for anything than for 
the perpetual diversity of opinion that 
prevailed between them on the seat of 
justice. Be the case what it would, 
every suitor was sure to have either 
Hook or Crook on his side.” 


CURIOSITIES OF AMERICAN POLIT¬ 
ICAL HISTORY. 


The American political history is full 
of curiosities and singular incidents. 
For instance, three of our Presidents, 
all of whom participated in the Revo¬ 
lution, died on its great anniversary, 
the 4th of July, viz.: John Adams, 
Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. 

General Washington, when he re¬ 
tired from the Presidency, was in the 
sixty-sixth year of his age. His suc¬ 
cessor, when he left, was sixty-six. 
James Madison had just passed his 
sixty-sixth year and Mr. Monroe was 
in his sixty-seventh, when they respec¬ 
tively left the chair. General Harri¬ 
son was sixty-seven years old when he 
was elected, and died in the Presiden¬ 
tial office. 

From 1801 to 1825, the Presidential 
office was filled by Virginians. Dur¬ 
ing the same interval, with the excep¬ 
tion of four years, the Vice-Presidential 
office was steadily held by citizens of 
New York. John Adams negotiated 
the treaty of peace that concluded the 
war of the Revolution with England. 
His son, John Quincy Adams, was a 
leading envoy, and negotiated the 
treaty which ended the second war 


with England, in 1814. His son. 
Charles Francis Adams, at the great 
crisis of our history, was the Minister 
to England during the recent war* 
from 1861 to 1865, the period which 
covers the “Alabama” claims, out of 
which another war was altogether pos¬ 
sible with the mother country. 

In 1800 John Adams was on a lead¬ 
ing Presidential ticket. Twenty-four 
years after, his son, John Quincy, was 
also a Presidential candidate. Twenty- 
fours years from that time, Charles 
Francis Adams, John Quincy Adams’ 
son, was an important candidate for 
Vice-President, with a contingent 
Presidential successor. 

Of the first six Presidents, four of 
them were taken from the office of Sec¬ 
retary of State ; and the other two 
being the first elected, could not per¬ 
form its duties. From this fact arose 
the precedents that makes the Secre¬ 
tary of State the first office in the Cab¬ 
inet, instead of the Secretary of the- 
Treasury, which is the case in Great 
Britian. 

The highest civil officer in the coun¬ 
try, at the time of the Declaration of 
Independence, was John Hancock, of 
Massachusetts, the President of the 
Continental Congress. The highest 
military officer was George Washing¬ 
ton, of Virginia. The first battle of 
the Revolution was fought in Massa¬ 
chusetts, and the last in Virginia. The 
first English settlement in the country 
was made in Virginia, and the second 
in Massachusetts. Of the fifty-six 
signers to the Declaration of Indepen¬ 
dence, three long survived upon the 
earth after all the others had died; 
and two of these had been upon the 
sub-committee of five which drafted 
the important instrument. The very 
last survivor, Charles Carroll, of Car¬ 
rollton, Maryland, threw the first 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


273 


shovelful of earth from the Baltimore 
& t^hio Raiiroad, the first railroad en¬ 
terprise in this country. The last man 
of the past inaugurated the coming 
future. 

No less than five of the greatest 
American statesmen were born in the 
same year, f782: Daniel Webster, 
John C. Calhoun, Thos. H. Benton, 
Martin Van Buren and Lewis Cass. 
From 1800 to 1855, a period running 
from the second President to the sev¬ 
enteenth, only two persons filled the 
office of Chief Justice of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, John Mar¬ 
shall and Roger B. Taney. 

The first Secretary of the Treasury 
of the United States, Alexander 
Hamilton, was alleged to be a de¬ 
faulter. 

The Capitol of the United States 
was located at Washington in pursu¬ 
ance of a corrupt bargain by which 
two or three members of Congress, 
who lived adjacent to it, and whose 
districts would be greatly benefitted by 
it, voted for the funding of the 
national debt for that consideration. 

But two men in the United States 
have, as they say in Oddfellowship, 
passed through all the “ chairs,” been 
Governors of States, held a first-class 
foreign mission, been the head of the 
Cabinet, then Vice President and Pres¬ 
ident. Their names are Thomas Jef¬ 
ferson and Martin Van Buren. 

Three Presidents died in office: 
Harrison, Taylor and Lincoln. 

Three persons were elected by the 
people Vice Presidents before they be¬ 
came Presidents : John Adams, Thos. 
Jefferson and Martin Van Buren. 

Three Vice Presidents died in office ; 
George Clinton, Eldridge Gerry and 
Wm. R. King. 

Three men were elected President 
who had been Minister to England un¬ 


der the Federal Government: John 
Quincy Adams, Martin Van Buren and 
James Buchanan. 

Three Vice Presidents became Pres¬ 
idents by the death of their chiefs; 
John Tyler, Millard Fillmore and 
Andrew Johnson, and every one of 
them pursued a policy adverse to that 
of the party by which they were 
elected. 

Two of the Vice Presidents of the 
United States — and they the youngest 
men that ever held the office — have 
been indicted for treason : Aaron Burr, 
and John C. Breckinridge — and in 
each case the government broke down 
and dismissed the case without even 
putting it before a jury. 

One Vice President, John C. Cal¬ 
houn, resigned his seat as President of 
the Senate, to take a place on the 
floor, where he could have the privi¬ 
lege of debate, and there elucidate 
his State rights views under the 
constitution. 


ATTAR OF ROSE. 

In ancient times the inhabitants of 
the East were the largest manufact¬ 
urers of perfumes, and the art of 
compounding sweet scents is said to 
have been the most largely developed 
in Persia and Egypt. Of late years, 
the French are the greatest producers, 
and — save in a few exceptional kinds 
known as Attar of Rose and Eau-de- 
Cologne — both in quality and variety 
outstrip all competitors in the markets 
of the world. 

The trade in perfumery is immense, 
and the popular kinds are a staple 
article in the stock of every well reg¬ 
ulated drug store, while they are also 
sold in large quantities by dealers in 
fancy goods, notions, etc. At one 
time musk, civet, ambergris and lav- 







274 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION 


ender were the most widely dissem¬ 
inated ; but of late years science lias 
made many additions to the ingre¬ 
dients used for this purpose, while 
civet has been almost entirely banished 
from fashionable circles. 

The base of European flower scents 
is comprised in six flowers, known as 
roses, violets, orange flowers, tube¬ 
roses, jasmine and acacia. Other flow¬ 
ers are used to some extent, but their 
odor is not of a sufficiently agreeable 
and distinctive character to be used 
separately. Besides, they can be imi¬ 
tated chemically to much better ad¬ 
vantage, and both the genuine and the 
imitation are mostly required to tone 
down the stronger perfumes. The 
bases of the leading varieties are also 
toned down by the addition of gerani¬ 
um, lavender, rose, thyme, patchouli, 
and other aromatic herbs. The agree¬ 
able scent of fragrant woods, such as 
sandal-wood, is sometimes used for the 
same purpose. Some perfumes are 
very volatile, while others, like musk 
and the at(ar of rose, are almost im¬ 
perishable : 

“You may break, you may ruin the vase 
if you will, 

But the scent of the roses will linger there 
still ” 

is as truthful as beautiful. 

Attar of rose greatly differs in qual¬ 
ity, according to the nature of the soil. 
The very best is obtained from the 
roses grown on stony or sandy ground, 
impregnated with oxide of iron, while 
the soils of a stiff and clayey nature 
only produce oils of an inferior char¬ 
acter. In order to test the purity of 
the oil, it is put into flasks which are 
subsequently immersed in water at a 
temperature of 63 to 68 degrees Fahr., 
when, if prime, it will freeze. Inferior 
nls will not freeze, even at 52 degrees 
Fahrenheit. 


The production is principally carried 
on in the districts of Kizalik, Kar- 
lowo, Kalofer, Tschripan, Eskin Saara, 
Jeni-Saara and Philipopoli, on the 
Southern slopes of the Balkan Moun¬ 
tains in Turkev, where are situated 
extensive gardens of the damask rose* 
semper vireus and musk rose. The 
distillation is advantageously carried 
on during a moist season, and the yield 
is consequently greatly enhanced by 
the condition of the atmosphere. 

In cloudy or damp weather the rose 
plants blow gradually, and the harvest 
is greatly extended, and the gathering 
of the flowers rendered easy, while the 
distillation is carried on with great 
care. On the other hand, if the 
weather prove dry, the crop is forced, 
and by unduly ripening large quanti¬ 
ties of the flowers, distillation is pro¬ 
ceeded with more rapidly. The esti¬ 
mated yield for the respective seasons 
is, for a wet one, one mical, or 1^ 
drachms to eight or nine ekes, or 22 
to 24 pounds of the blossoms; while 
in a dry season, fourteen to sixteen 
ekes, or 38 to 44 pounds of the flowers, 
will scarcely suffice to produce the 
same quantity. Manufacturers fre¬ 
quently adulterate the oil by a mixture 
of foreign substances, either obtained 
from plants or grasses indigenous to 
the country. The rose bush arrives at 
the highest state of nerfection when 
growing in low and sheltered localities. 
In the uplands its growth is slower 
and more unreliable. The best quality 
of attar varies from 17 to 18 piastres 
the miscal; while inferior grades only 
realize from 14 to 15 piastres the 
miscal. 

The exports from Adrianople, the 
chief market for its distribution, are 
made to both Europe and Asia, Ger¬ 
many being much the largest pur- / 
chaser, and taking about two-third? 





PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


275 


the annual supply, as was seen last 
year, when the crop amounted to 
93,750 ounces, valued at about £70,000, 
of which Germany secured 61,000 
ounces; the remainder being sent to 
the East by way of Constantinople. 
From Germany supplies find their way 
to the rest of Europe and the Conti¬ 
nent of America. 

There is something peculiarly mys¬ 
tical about perfumes. They cannot 
be analyzed, like most other sub¬ 
stances ; neither can the fragrance be 
weighed. What, then, constitutes the 
odor ? Sometimes it is as evanescent 
as the mist of the morning, and is 
either evaporated or carried off on the 
wings of the wind ; but other varieties 
fill a room with their agreeable fra¬ 
grance for years. The volume of the 
odoriferous body all the while appears 
not the least diminished, although the 
elements from which it was originally 
obtained are wholly destroyed. 

NOTATION. 

A system of written notation has 
been in use from time immemorial. 
The first record we have of it is of 
figures written with a stick, on a board 
covered with sand. Before that, all 
calculations were made with pebbles, 
beans, and the like. Even now, the 
Chinese do their calculating with little 
stones strung on wires in a frame. 
The Romans first used vertical lines— 
I., II., III., etc., to express numbers. 
The Arabic figures, which we use now, 
are, however, of much earlier date. It 
is chiefly valuable on account of the 
great convenience it affords by giving 
a figure a value, according to the place 
it occupies in the line. By this sys¬ 
tem the most enormous sums can be 
expressed, by the ten little characters 
which form our numerical alphabet. 
The decimal system of notation was 


practiced in Egypt before the days of 
history. It is now the universal sys¬ 
tem in all calculations. Even arbitrary 
matters, like weights, measures, or 
money are calculated by it. 


COG-WHEEL. 


Wheels with cogs to transmit power 
have been in use for hundreds of years, 
dating back to the time of Archimedes, 
one of the most famous mathematicians 
of the age. Among his inventions 
were the combination of pulleys for 
lifting heavy weights, and the revolv¬ 
ing screw. He was acquainted with 
toothed wheel-work before the Christian 
era. Thomas Young does not doubt 
that Ebn-junis, at the end of the tenth 
century, had applied the pendulum to 
the measurement of time, but ascribes 
the first combination of the pendulum 
with wheel-work to Santoni in 1612. 
The clock of Ctesibus under Ptolemy, 
which gave the civil hours throughout 
the year at Alexandria, was, according 
to the description of Vitruvius, a com¬ 
plicated hydraulic machine worked by 
means of toothed wheels. The original 
mode of construction was to insert cogs 
or pieces of wood into notches in the 
face of the wheel. The substitution of 
the iron for the wooden wheel is origi¬ 
nally due to Sweaton, who introduced 
iron wheels at Carron, in Great Britian, 
in 1754, and at Derbyshire shortly af¬ 
ter. About the same time, Murdock 
used a cast-iron bevel wheel in Scot¬ 
land. The credit of the application of 
cast-iron for mill work is due to John 
Rennie, an eminent and successful engi¬ 
neer, who, in 1784, adopted it for bevel 
and spur wheels at Boulton and Watts’ 
Rolling Mill and Foundry. Cog, spur 
and ratchet wheels are now universally 
used in the construction of all kinds of 
light and heavy machinery. 










276 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION 


AQUEDUCTS. 


The construction of artificial cham 
nels for the conveyance of water dates 
far back in antiquity. We find evi¬ 
dences of their existence among nearly 
all nations. In the reign of King 
Solomon capacious reservoirs were 
constructed from which water was ear¬ 
ned six miles by an aqueduct to Jeru¬ 
salem ; and it is said that such is their 
present state of preservation that this 
city still receives a large supply of wa¬ 
ter from this source. In Mexico, during 
the reign of Montezuma, an aqueduct, 
many miles in length, furnished water 
to the capital, and its ruins testify to 
its ancient magnitude and grandeur. 

The most remarkable aqueducts on 
record, either in respect to their 
length, the difficulties attending their 
construction, or the vast expense they 
involved, are those of the Incas of 
Peru. These sagacious rulers were 
compelled to adopt this course for the 
purpose of fertilizing their barren and 
sandy territory, which was unproduct¬ 
ive without artificial irrigation. These 
aqueducts were several hundred miles 
in length, and some portions necessa¬ 
rily built upon the slopes of the Andes. 
These portions often required tunnels 
which penetrated the solid rocks, and 
again were carried over wide chasms, 
compelling the erection of walls of 
solid masonry, which had to be con¬ 
structed without the assistance of those 
labor-saving appliances that modern 
mechanical genius has invented. Even 
the use of steel or iron tools was then 
unknown. These aqueducts were of 
massive blocks of hewn stones, nicely 
adjusted to each other without any ce¬ 
ment, with the manufacture of which 
the Peruvians were entirely unac¬ 
quainted. The most celebrated of 
these aqueducts extended a distance 


of between four and five hundred 
miles, and bear the most remarkable 
evidence of the energy and persever- 
ence of this people. We find authen¬ 
tic records of similar structures, though 
of far more limited proportions, in 
Egypt and Babylonia, but our infor¬ 
mation respecting them is too meagre 
and unsatisfactory to justify more 
than a passing notice. 

But no nation of ancient or of mod¬ 
ern times, even with all the advantages 
advanced science and mechanical in¬ 
ventions have conferred, have excelled 
the Romans in the wonderful skill and 
ingenuity which their aqueducts 
show. Historical evidence establishes 
the fact that not less than twenty-four 
of these structures, varying in length 
from ten to sixty-five miles, conducted 
water into the city of Rome. Though 
their knowledge of civil engineering, 
compared with modern attainments, 
was very circumscribed, they ^yet read¬ 
ily overcame the difficulties which nat¬ 
ural impediments presented. Being 
unacquainted with the manufacture 
and use of the strong metallic pipes 
now employed by means of which ra¬ 
vines and rivers are crossed, by de¬ 
scending on one side and ascending on 
the other, they were compelled to con¬ 
struct their conduits upon grades of 
easy and regular descents, otherwise 
the pressure of heavy columns of 
water would seriously endanger if not 
destroy them. On account of the cir¬ 
cuitous routes, which, for this reason, 
they were frequently forced to follow, 
their aqueducts were of much greater 
length than modern science would 
have indicated. One of these, styled 
the New Anio, extended more than 
sixty-three miles, and in consequence 
of the depressed state of territory over 
which it passed, six and a half miles 
were supported on an uninterrupted se- 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


277 


ries of arches, many of which were one 
hundred feet in height. Another, the 
Aqua Martia, was thirty-eight miles in 
length, in the construction of which 
seven thousand arches were required. 
Hard burnt brick on polished and deli¬ 
cately adjusted stone work, imbedded 
in cement, were used in the construc¬ 
tion of these water courses. The 
quantity of water supplied to the citi¬ 
zens of Rome by these stupendous 
works is without a parallel in modern 
times. One ancient writer, in his en¬ 
thusiasm, declared that whole rivers 
flowed through the streets of Rome. 
To an estimated population of 1,000,- 
000 citizens, not less than 50,000,000 
cubic feet of water were daily supplied, 
or more than 300 gallons to each indi¬ 
vidual. The Roman people built other 
similar structures in various portions 
of their possessions. One at Metz, in 
Belgic Gaul, is reported to have ex¬ 
celled in magnitude and grandeur even 
those which supplied the capital. 

In modern Europe we find many 
works of this description worthy of 
note, particularly in Turkey and Spain, 
but the most deserving of mention is 
that constructed by Louis the XIV., 
at Versailles. The bridge by which it 
is supported is pronounced by engi¬ 
neers one of the most splendid triumphs 
of modern art. It is about fort}^-four 
hundred feet in length, more than two 
hundred in height, and rests upon 
three tiers of arches, one upon another, 
each tier comprising two hundred and 
forty-two arches, with a space of fifty 
feet. This aqueduct is sixty miles in 
length, passes through forty-five tun¬ 
nels, and has the capacity to discharge 
198,000 gallons of water per minute. 

Among the more modern aqueducts, 
which can now be found in almost 
every city of any magnitude, those of 
Ne i,cr v ork, Philadelphia and Boston, 


are noted. The city of Bouton is sup¬ 
plied by Lake Cochituate, which com¬ 
prehends a water area of nearly seven 
hundred acres, and is distant about 
twenty-three miles from the reservoir 
in East Boston. This is capable of 
supplying 10,000,000 gallons every 
twenty-four hours. 

New York City is supplied by the 
Croton River, which, at the point 
where the aqueduct starts, is distant 
from the distributing reservoir, on 
40th street, forty and a half miles. 
The receiving reservoir *s capable of 
holding 150,000,000 gallons, and the 
distributing reservoir 20,000,000. The 
whole cost of this invaluable enter¬ 
prise was nearly eleven million dollars. 


THE INTENTION OF THE THERMOM¬ 
ETER. 

The first thermometer appears to 
have been constructed by Galileo in 
1597. It depended upon the dilatibil- 
ity of the air. A glass bulb was joined 
to the extremity of a glass tube, and a 
little column of liquid introduced into 
the tube by the open extremity. By 
this simple means a small volume of 
air was imprisoned in the instrument, 
and this air being separated from the 
atmosphere by the little column of 
liquid, its quantity always remained 
the same. When an instrument thus 
constructed is put in a warm place, 
the liquid index increases its distance 
from the bulb, which shows that the 
air contained gets warmer, and aug¬ 
ments in volume, retaining a pressure 
nearly equal to that of the atmos¬ 
phere, which acts on the index by the 
open extremity of the tube. 

Inversely, when the thermometer is 
put in a colder place, the column of 
water sinks — that is to say, the index 
approaches nearer to the bulb, because 











278 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the contained air is cooled and reduced 
in volume. 

Many savans in Galileo’s time ap¬ 
plied themselves to the study of the 
thermometer. In fact, the foundation 
of modern physics was then laid. 
They felt the necessity of creating 
instruments for observing natural phe¬ 
nomena in a better manner than had 
yet been done. The thermometer of 
Cornelius Duebbel, son of a Dutch 
peasant, came rapidly into use in 
Flanders and England. This, also, 
consisted of a glass bulb and tube 
containing air. The tube is placed 
vertical!}", and its open extremity 
plunged under some liquid contained 
in a little dish. To regulate the quan¬ 
tity of air which should remain in the 
bulb, it is warmed, which causes sev¬ 
eral bubbles to escape ; after this, it is 
allowed to cool. The liquid then rises 
in the tube, and its level serves as an 
index, like that of Galileo’s thermom¬ 
eter. 


CHEMISTRY. 

The word chemistry is derived from 
the Arabic, and was originally the art 
or science now called alchemy, which 
was the supposed gift of a certain few 
individuals who possessed the power of 
turning the baser metals into gold. 

The Arabic word kama signifies to 
hide, secrete, or conceal. The art of 
alchemy is of very great antiquity, 
and is supposed to have been practiced 
as early as the third century. The 
Emperor Diocletian made an order di¬ 
recting search for books or writings 
treating of the wonderful art of trans¬ 
muting the baser metals into gold and 
silver, and commanding that all such 
books or writings, when found, should 
be committed to the flames, and that 
all the implements, retorts, powders or 


liquids used for such purpose should 
likewise be destroyed. 

Alchemy was long connected by the 
ignorant and superstitious with the 
power and attributes of the devil, and 
its possessors were charged with being 
in league with him in the practice of 
what was known as the black art. 

It is thought by many erudite peo¬ 
ple that the art of counterfeiting the 
ancient coins had its origin in the 
study and manipulations of the al¬ 
chemist, and that in those early times 
the secret manner in which these mys¬ 
terious beings worked, the care they 
exercised, and holding themselves 
aloof from society, was with a view to 
hide their employment from the pub¬ 
lic gaze, while, by means of their 
knowledge of the arts and their ac¬ 
quired skill in other respects, they 
were enabled secretly and successfully,, 
to a greater or less degree, to flood the 
channels of commercial circulation 
with base silver and gold. 

The alchemist, with the purpose 
also of gaining credit with the masses,, 
pretended to have found a universal 
remedy for disease, and an alkahest, or 
universal solvent, for every known 
substance. This pretended science 
flourished greatly from the thirteenth 
to the seventeenth century, but is now 
held in universal contempt. 

After the downfall of the race of 
alchemists, the true science of chem¬ 
istry grew up and developed into har¬ 
monious proportions. It endeavored 
to discover by analysis and synthesis 
the nature and properties of different- 
bodies, and the changes of composition 
that occur among the integrant ele¬ 
ments under certain combinations. 

The use of symbols was early em¬ 
ployed by the alchemists to represent 
the metals known to them, the metals 
themselves being at the same time 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


279 


called after the heavenly bodies. The 
early chemists also used a few symbols 
that seemed appropriate to their oc¬ 
cupation, and for many centuries these 
continued to be employed without 
material alteration. Early in the be¬ 
ginning of the present century the 
chemist Brezelius proposed a modified 
system of characters, which rendered 
it possible to write the exact composi¬ 
tion of chemical compounds by weight, 
and which also indicated chemical re¬ 
actions. This system of symbols was 
used until a comparatively recent 
period, but the chemist Gerhardt pro¬ 
posed some slight modifications, which 
would render it possible to represent 
the volume as well as the weight of the 
substances entering into a compound, 
besides being a ready and simple means 
of illustrating the complex changes 
arising in organic substances from 
chemical action. This science occu¬ 
pied a low position for many hundred 
years, and not until within the last 
two centuries has it made decided and 
permanent advancement. It is true, 
there are a few exceptions, such as the 
tanning of leather; the knowledge 
of certain coloring matters or dyes, 
among which was the real Tyrian 
purple; an acquaintance with the 
properties of certain plants, drugs and 
resins; and the manufacturing of glazed 
pottery, which the Persians carried on 
to a great degree of perfection. 

One great and essential benefit con¬ 
ferred on mankind by the discoveries 
of modern chemistry, has arisen from 
the utilization of waste substances. 
The bones of dead animals are revital¬ 
ized in the shape of phosphorus ; the 
dregs of the wine cask return to us in 
the shape of seidlitz powders; the 
washings of coal gas and sewers are, 
by distillation, converted into ammo¬ 
nia ; glycerine is the sweet principle 


of fatty or oily substances; glues and 
jellies are made trom the hoofs oi 
bones of domestic animals; chlorine 
is more or less used as a substitute for 
sulphur in bleaching. Absorption and 
distillation have given us numberless 
extracts, cordials and perfumes, and 
there is scarcely a plant, tree or fruit,, 
but, in some form or other, has beeR 
made to render up certain active prin¬ 
ciples of its composition, which, but 
for the subtle agencies of chemistry, 
would have remained inert, or in a 
crude state; but when thus developed, 
under various forms of application, 
either medicinally or otherwise, add 
something to the general welfare of 
mankind. 

The greatest benefits, however, have 
been experienced from this science in 
its bearings upon the sanitary reforms 
of the last century. Men are now 
better housed and fed; noxious dis¬ 
eases are more scientifically treated, 
and the spread of pestilence and fam¬ 
ine curtailed. The diffusion of intel¬ 
ligence in regard to light, heat and 
ventilation, is very general; the causes 
and prevention of miasma in city and 
country receive the attention of local 
governments, and there is a disposi¬ 
tion everywhere to make the most of 
the advantages presented by country, 
climate and condition, for the eleva¬ 
tion and social happiness of the human 
race. 

If the alchemist of old failed to 
accomplish the turning of the baser 
metals into gold and silver, and the 
discovery of a panacea for human ills, 
he at least stimulated a spirit of in¬ 
quiry which has borne fruit in the 
investigations and experiments of the 
pains-taking chemist and his co¬ 
workers in other scientific pursuits. 

Saddles came into use in 4th century. 






280 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


HISTORY OF GLOVES. 


Gloves are not a modern invention, 
although they are much more used at 
present than in former times. Xeno¬ 
phon describes the ancient Persians as 
wearing gloves, and Yarro informs us 
that they were of long standing 
among the Romans. But they were 
often worn only as a protection of the 
hand in particular cases; in warm 
climates they were not thought very 
necessary, and it was only in cold 
countries that their use became gen¬ 
eral. Gloves were, in the early ages 
of Christianity, introduced as a part 
of monastic costume, and, in later 
periods, formed an essential part of the 
Episcopal habit. The glove was em¬ 
ployed by princes as a token of invest¬ 
iture ; and to deprive a person of his 
gloves was a mark of divesting him of 
his office. Throwing down a glove 
constituted a challenge, which he ac¬ 
cepted who took it up, a custom which 
was continued down to the reign of 
Elizabeth, and this ceremony was per¬ 
formed, perhaps for the last time, at 
the coronation of George IV., when 
his majesty’s champion entered West¬ 
minster Hall, completely armed and 
mounted, and, throwing down his 
glove, challenged any one to dispute 
the right of his sovereign to the crown. 
Gloves were particularly used in hawk¬ 
ing ; and the custom of presenting 
them at weddings and funerals is still 
general. They were formerly consid¬ 
ered as a valuable New Years gift, 
when they were richly worked and 
embroidered. 

Gloves were made of various mate¬ 
rials : leather, silk, linen thread, cot¬ 
ton thread, cotton cloths and worsted. 
The good qualities of gloves are 
strength, warmth in Winter, coolness 
in Summer, elasticity in fitting well, 


and to be well sewed in the seams. 
There is a distinction, also, between 
those which will bear washing and 
such as will not; likewise, in the man¬ 
ner of sewing. 

Of leather gloves, there are a great 
many kinds, according to the quality 
of the material, or the uses for which 
they are required. Of these, the 
principal are: 

Kid gloves, the most beautiful, from 
their softness, thinness and elasticity, 
fitting the hand almost like a second 
skin. They are white, and dyed of all 
colors, but white kid is always worn in 
full dress. Those of French manufac¬ 
ture are certainly superior to ours in 
the neatness of the workmanship, and 
for elasticity they are highly prized. 
This superiority has occasioned many 
imitations in this country, and it is 
said that most of what are sold for 
French are, in fact, home-made from 
French or Italian skins. There are few 
goats in England ; therefore the kid 
leather is chiefly imported from Switz¬ 
erland and Tuscany, whence it comes 
by way of Leghorn. Most of the low¬ 
er-priced gloves sold for kid are made 
of lamb-skin, which is thicker; a vast 
many are made in Worcestershire. 

It used formerly to be the custom in 
the southwest of Ireland to slaughter 
many cows while in calf. The skins 
of these unborn calves were of extra¬ 
ordinary fineness and delicacy, and from 
such was prepared the leather of which 
the celebrated Limerick gloves were 
made. This practice is now, however, 
almost discontinued; and whatever 
merit the Limerick gloves may still 
possess is owing to the skill of the man- 
afacturer, and not to the superiority 
his raw material, which is generally 
kid leather. Beaver gloves are among 
the most common of the cheap leather 
gloves, manufactured chiefly at Here- 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


281 


ford ; they are dyed of many colors, 
but they do not wash. Woodstock 
gloves are a superior kind of soft 
leather, made of lamb-skins, which 
have the advantage of bearing wash- 
ing ; they are manufactured chiefly at 
Woodstock, in Oxfordshire, which has 
been celebrated for them ever since the 
time of Queen Elizabeth. Buck-skin 
is the strongest kind of leather gloves, 
and washes well. It may be had white, 
and of various colors. Doe-skins are 
of a thick, strong, and soft leather; 
bear washing. Tan leather is the 
name of a very servicable, strong and 
cheap glove for riding, driving or gar¬ 
dening ; its color is that of bark or 
tan, and it is either common or York 
tan. Sheep-skin is not much used, 
except in the army; it is generally 
white. Leather gloves are sometimes 
lined with fleecy hosiery or fur for 
winter, and are sometimes cuffed. 


THE WEDDING-RING FINGER. 

By almost universal consent this is 
the fourth finger on the left hand. Why 
this particular digit should have re¬ 
ceived such a token of honor and trust 
beyond all its cogeners, both in Pagan 
and Christian times, has been variously 
interpreted. The most common expla¬ 
nation is, according to Sir Thomas 
Browne, u presuming therein that a 
particular vessel, nerve, vein or artery 
is conferred thereto from the heart;” 
which vascular communication Browne 
shows to be anatomically incorrect. 
Macrobius gives another reason, which 
may perhaps satisfy those anatomists 
who are not satisfied with the above. 
u Poliex,” he says, 44 or thumb (whose 
office and general usefulness are suffici¬ 
ently indicative from its Latin deriva- 
tion poello and from its Greek equivalent 
■antichier, which means 4 as good as a 


hand’) is too busy to be set apart for 
any special employment; the next 
finger to the thumb, being but half 
protected on that side, besides having 
other work to do, is also ineligible; 
the opprobrium attached to the middle 
finger, called medicus, puts it entirely 
out of the question ; and as the little 
finger stands exposed, and is, moreover, 
too puny to enter the list in such a 
contest, the spousal honors devolve 
naturally on prounbus, the wedding 
finger.” In the British Apollo , 1788, 
it is urged that the fourth finger was 
chosen, from its being not only less 
used than either of the rest, but more 
capable of preserving a ring from 
bruises ; having this one quality pecu¬ 
liar to itself, that it cannot be ex- 
tended but in company with some 
other finger, whereas the rest may be 
stretched out to their full length and 
straightness. 


DENTAL SURGERY. 

This includes the surgical treatment 
of the teeth — their extraction, the 
remedying of serious defects, and the 
mechanical operation of making and 
fitting artificial teeth to supply the 
place of those lost. Although it is 
less than a century since this art has 
taken the rank of a distinct profession, 
attention was directed from the earliest 
periods to the means of preserving and 
improving the beauty of the teeth. 
The ancient Hebrew writers evidently 
appreciated their importance in giving 
expression to the countenance, as when 
Jacob, blessing Judah, says, 44 His 
teeth shall be white with milk,” and 
Solomon compared a fine set of teeth 
to a flock of sheep even shorn. In the 
time of Herodotus the art of Dentistry 
appears to have been practised in 
Egypt, as a distinct branch of surgery. 










282 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Little, however is known of the attain¬ 
ments of those early practitioners. In 
the ancient tombs of these people, 
artificial teeth of ivory or wood were 
found by Belzoni and others, some of 
which were fastened upon gold plates. 
It is also stated that the teeth of 
the mummies have been found filled 
with gold. Thus it would seem that 
the Egyptians understood processes of 
the art which are commonly regarded 
as only the inventions of the refined 
nations of modern times. In the } 7 ear 
1836, the eminently practical work, 
“Principles of Dental Surgery, 11 of 
Leonard Koecker, M. D., who had 
practised dentistry from 1807 to 1822, 
in Baltimore and Philadelphia, ap¬ 
peared in London, and fully established 
the claims of the art to take rank as a 
distinct branch of science. It appears 
that in 1776, Duchateau, a chemist of 
St. Germain en Laye, succeeded with 
the aid of Dubois, a dentist of note in 
Paris, in producing artificial teeth. 
They imitated the color of the natural 
teeth and gums by the use of mineral 
oxides, and obtained royal letters pat¬ 
ent from Louis XIV. for the invention. 
The practice of dentistry was intro¬ 
duced into the United States by Le 
Mair, of the French force which joined 
our army during the revolutionary war. 
About 1788, Mr. John Greenwood 
established himself in New York, the 
first American of this profession. In 
1795, he carved in ivory an entire set 
of teeth for Gen. Washington. 


BEAUTY IN AGE. 

History is full of the accounts of 
the fascinations of women who were 
no longer young. Thus, Helen of 
Troy was over forty years old when she 
perpetrated the most famous elope¬ 
ment on record, and as the siege of 


Troy lasted a decade, she could not 
have been very juvenile when the un¬ 
fortunate Paris restored her to her 
husband, who is reported to have 
received her with unquestioning love 
and gratitude. Pericles wedded the 
courtezan Aspasia when she was 
thirty-six, and yet afterwards, for 
thirty years or more, she wielded an 
undiminished reputation for beauty. 
Cleopatra was past thirty when 
Anthony fell under her spell, which 
never lessened until her death, nearly 
ten years after; and Livia was thirty- 
three when she won the heart of 
Augustus, over whom she maintained 
her ascendency to the last. Turning 
to more modern history, where it is 
possible to verify dates more accu¬ 
rately, we have the extraordinary 
Diano de Portiers, who was thirty-six 
when Henry II. (then Duke of Orleans, 
and just half her age,) became attached 
to her; and she was held as the first 
lady and most beautiful woman at 
court, up to the period of the mon¬ 
arch’s death and of the accession to 
power of Catherine of Medicis. Anne 
of Austria was thirty-eight when she 
was described as the handsomest queen 
of Europe, and when Buckingham 
and Richelieu were her jealous admir¬ 
ers. Ninon de l 1 Enclos, the most 
celebrated wit and beauty of her day,. 
was the idol of three generations of 
the golden youth of France, and she 
was seventy-two when the Abbe de 
Berns fell in love with her. True it 
is, that in the case of this lady, a rare 
combination of culture, talents and 
personal attractions endowed their 
possessor seemingly with the gifts of 
eternal youth. Bianca Capello was 
thirty-eight when the Grand Duke 
Francesca of Florence fell captive to 
her charms and made her his wife,, 
though he was five years her junior. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


283 


Louis XVI. wedded Madame de Main-i 
tenon when she was forty-three years! 
of age. Catherine II. of Russia was 
thirty-eight when she seized the 
empire of Russia and captivated the) 
dashing young General Orloff. Up to 
the time of her death, at sixty-seven,- 
she seems to have retained the same 
bewitching powers, for the lamenta¬ 
tions were heartfelt among all those 
who had ever known her personally.! 
Mile. Mars, the celebrated French 
tragedienne, only attained the zenith 
of her beauty and power at the age 
of forty-five. At that period the love¬ 
liness of her hands and arms espe¬ 
cially was celebrated throughout Eu¬ 
rope. The famous Madame Recamier, 
was thirty-eight when Barras was 
ousted from power, and she was, with¬ 
out dispute, declared to be the most 
beautiful woman in Europe, which 
rank she held for fifteen years. 


ANCIENT AND MODERN COINAGE. 

Platinum was coined in Russia from 
1828 to 1845. But the metals best 
adapted and most generally used as 
coin, are copper, nickel, silver, and 
gold ; the first two being now used for 
coins of small value, to make change, 
the two latter, commonly designated 
u the precious metals,” as measures of 
value and legal tender. On the conti¬ 
nent of Europe a composition of sil¬ 
ver and copper, called bullion, has long 
been used for small coins; which are 
made current at a much higher value 
than that of the metals they contain. 
In China, St. Sysee silver is the princi¬ 
pal currency, which is merely ingot 
silver of a uniform fineness, paid and 
received by weight. 

Spanish and Mexican dollars also cir¬ 
culate there, but only after they have 
been assayed and stamped as proof 


that they are of the standard fineness. 
As Asia Minor produced gold, its 
earliest coinage was of that metal. 
Italy and Sicily possessing copper, 
bronze was first coined there. 

The Lydians had gold coins at the 
close of the ninth century B. C.; 
Greece proper only at the close of the 
' eighth century B. C. Servius Tullius, 
King of Rome, made the pound weight 
of copper current money. 

The Romans first coined silver 281 
B. C., and gold 207 B. C. Some na¬ 
tions, although they worked the metals 
with skill, seem never to have coined 
money, and such was the case with the 
Irish, of whom no coins are known 
prior to the English invasion in the 
twelfth centur}^. 

The amount of specie existing in 
Europe, A. D. 14, was equal in value 
to but £358. 

After the Augustan era the product 
of the European mines failed, and the 
stock of coin gradually disappeared 
until the ninth century, each step of 
its fall being marked by the greater 
povertj" and social degradation of the 
people, until at last such was the 
scarcity of coin, human beings in 
Britain were made a legal tender at 
specified rates. 

This dearth of the precious metals 
contributed largely toward establishing 
the dark ages. Out of these depths 
arose the great modern institutions — 
the mercantile theory and credit — the 
one a palliative and the other a cure. 
No increase in the stock of coin oc¬ 
curred until after the discovery of 
America, but the invention of paper 
credit largely alleviated the prevailing 
misery. This invention is due to the 
Jews, who, in 1160, introduced bills of 
exchange, and who were the only per¬ 
sons, from the institution of the canon 
law against the taking of interest for 








284 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the loans of money to the sixteenth 
century, who, in Western Europe, 
durst make a business of giving credit. 

The same people established the first 
banks in Europe. That of Venice was 
established in 1157, that of Geneva in 
1345, that of Barcelona in 1401, and 
that of Genoa in 1407. The discovery 
of America in 1492, produced no im¬ 
mediate increase in the European stock 
of coin. The mines of Potosi were 
opened in 1545, but it was not until 
near the seventeenth century that the 
stock of coin sensibly increased. The 
taking of interest was totally forbidden 
in England until 1571, and the device 
of extending credit by means of in¬ 
dorsement was not practiced until a 
centurv later, when it was introduced 
from Holland. 

The stock of coin steadily increased 
until 1827, when it reached its highest 
point, and then declined until the 
opening of the Pacific coast mines in 
1848, when it again increased, passing 
in 1860 its greatest previous hight, and 
obtaining in 1867 the enormous sum 
of four thousand six hundred millions 
of dollars. 

Copper coins, few in number, were 
used by the Mint of the United States 
as early as 1792 ; but these are now so 
rare that one of them sold at auction 
in Philadelphia, in January, 1860, for 
sixty-five dollars and fifty cents, and 
another for fifty dollars. The Mint 
did not get fairly into operation until 
1793, when the first copper cent ap¬ 
peared. 

The estimated amount of gold in 
existence at the commencement of 
the Christian era was $427,000,000. At 
the discovery of America, in 1492, this 
amount had diminished to $57,000,000. 
In 1600 the amount had risen to $105,- 
000,000; in 1700 to $351,000,000; in 
1800 to $1,251,000,000. The Russian 


mines extending over one-third of the 
surface of the globe, on parallel fifty 
degrees north latitude, were discovered 
in 1819. 

In 1843, the estimated amount of 
gold in existence was $2,000,000,000. 

Next followed the discoveries in Cal¬ 
ifornia, February 9th, 1848, and in 
Australia, February 12th, 1851, which 
added enormously to the gold produc¬ 
tion. In 1853, the amount in existence 
was computed at $3,000,000,000; and 
in 1860 it was $4,000,000,000. 

From the commencement of the 
Christian era to the discovery of 
America, it was estimated that gold 
had been taken from the surface and 
mined to the amount of $3,800,000,000. 

In the reign of Darius gold was 
thirteen times more valuable, weight 
for weight, than silver. In the time 
of Plato it was twelve times as valua¬ 
ble. In that of Julius Csesar gold was 
only nine times more valuable, owing, 
perhaps to the enormous quantities 
of gold seized by him in his wars. 


MAHOGANY CUTTING IN HONDURAS. 

Of all occupations known to man, 
that of the mahogany cutter is per¬ 
haps the wildest in its nature, and yet 
among the most systematic in its 
arrangements. When the cutter has 
fixed on the valley of some river as the 
field of his operations, he makes a 
depot for storing provisions, and for 
securing and embarking the wood. 
Here he maintains a little fleet of pit- 
pans for carrying supplies and keeping 
up relations with the u works ” proper, 
the sites of which are determined 
chiefly by the abundance of trees, their 
accessibility, and the means that exist 
for feeding the cattle which it is nec¬ 
essary to use in “ trucking ” the wood. 
To those points it is often necessary 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


285 


to drive the oxen through thick and 
untracked forests, and to carry the 
chains and trucks, by means of small 
boats, against strong currents, or over 
the shallows and rapids, which r.re 
only surmounted with infinite labor. 
The site once definitely fixed upon, 
the next step is to erect temporal 
dwellings for the men — a task of no 
great difficulty, as the only requisite is 
protection from the sun and rains, 
which is effected by a roof thatched 
with long grass from the swamps, or 
with u cahoon 11 leaves, or the branches 
of the thatch-palm. A hammock 
swung between two posts, two stones 
to support his kettle, and the hut of 
the cutter is both finished and fur¬ 
nished ! 

The mahogany season, which lasts 
some months, commences in August 
of each year, it being the opinion of 
cutters that the wood is not then so 
apt to split m falling, nor so likely to 
“ check 11 in seasoning, as when cut 
from April to August, in what is called 
“ the spring. 1 ’ Furthermore, by com¬ 
mencing at this period, the cutter is 
enabled to get down his wood and 
prepare it for trucking by the setting 
in of the dry season. 

The laborers are divided into gangs, 
or companies, of from twenty to fifty 
each, under the direction of a leader 
styled a “captain,” who directs the 
men in his company, assigns them 
their daily tasks, and adds to or de¬ 
ducts from their wages, in proportion 
as they accomplish more or less than 
what is supposed to be a just day’s 
work. Each gang has also one person 
connected with it who is called a 
hunter, whose duty it is to search the 
u bush ” for trees proper to be cut. 
His work, therefore, commences some¬ 
what earlier than that of the others, 
and as it involves activity and intelli¬ 


gence, he is paid much higher wages 
than the mere cutters. His first move¬ 
ment is to cut his way through the 
thickest of the woods to some elevated, 
situation, where he climbs the tallest 
trees he finds, from which he minutely 
surveys the surrounding country. 

Around Belize the mahogany cutters 
are chiefly negroes, descendants of the 
slaves who were formerly employed 
there. But in Honduras they are 
principally Caribs, who, in activity and 
strength, are said to excel the negroes ; 
they are also more intelligent, and 
require less care and superintendence. 
Many of them go annually to Belize, 
and hire themselves for the season, re¬ 
turning to their homes at its close. 


CUTTING PRECIOUS STONES. 

Carnellan is the substance that has 
been selected as the example of the 
mode of cutting and polishing stones 
of a medium degree of hardness, the 
two other examples being alabaster 
for the softest stones, and sapphire for 
hardest, excepting alone the diamond, 
which last is worked by a manner 
peculiar to itself, and separately con¬ 
sidered. 

Carnelian, when operated upon by 
the lapidary, is first slit with the thin 
iron slicer, fed with diamond dust, and 
moistened with brick oil; secondly, it 
is rough ground on the lead mill, with 
coarse emery and water; and, thirdly, 
it is smoothed either on the same lap 
rubbed down fine, or with similar lap 
used with finer emery ; thus far, the 
steps are precisely as explained with 
alabaster. 

Carnelian, and sometimes stones of 
a similar or superior hardness, which 
are not smaller than about one-third 
of an inch in diameter, are, in almost 
all cases, polished on a lead mill plen- 







286 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


tifully supplied with rotten stone and 
water; but this fine powder will 
scarcely adhere after the manner of 
the coarser and granular emery, or by 
simple pressure; and, therefore, to 
expedite the process, the face of the 
polishing lap is hacked or jarred, 
although in a manner quite different 
from that pursued by the cutler. 

The lapidary employs the blade of 
an old table knife, which he holds 
slenderly between the thumb and 
finger, placed near the middle of the 
blade, while the front part of the edge 
rests on the lap, .not perpendicularly, 
but slanted a little forwards, so as to- 
meet the lap edge foremost during its 
revolution. The unstable position of 
the knife causes it to iump, vibrate, or 
chatter on the lap, and at each jump 
it makes a very slight furrow ; these 
fill the face of the mill with minute 
lines, or grooves, that serve for the 
lodgement of the finely powdered 
rotten stone. It is, however, to be 
observed that the wheel should first 
be made to revolve in the one direction 
and then in the opposite, that the 
marks of the hacking knife may cross 
each other. 

Smaller and harder stones are more 
commonly polished on a pewter than 
a lead lap, and for the smallest and 
hardest stones a copper lap is pre¬ 
ferred ; but all the polishing tools, of 
what metal soever they may be made, 
are hacked as above described, and 
used with rotten stone and water. 

Rounded or convex stones, or those 
said to be en cahochon , whether of car- 
nelian or even several of the harder 
stones, are in many cases successively 
wrought by means of the wood mill 
with fine emery, the list mill with 
pumice stone, and a leather lap with 
putty powder. This is done on ac¬ 
count of the greater elasticity of these 


apparatuses, which enables them to 
ply more conveniently to the globular 
forms of the works to be polished, and 
avoid wearing them in ridges or flat 
places. 

Faceted works, on all stone and 
hard substances, are for the most part 
cut by the lapidary after one of three 
different modes. First, for pastes, or 
artificial stones, and many soft stones, 
as amber, carnelian, jet, etc., the facets 
are usually cut on a lead wdieel with 
emery, and polished on pewter with 
rotten stone. Secondly, for some of a 
harder kind, but inferior in hardness 
to sapphires, the succession of tools is 
a pewter lap and fine emery for the 
cutting, and a copper lap with rotten 
stone for the polishing. Thirdly, for 
sapphires, the chrysoberyl, and rarely 
for some few others likewise, a copper 
lap with diamond powder is used for 
cutting the facets, and a copper lap 
with rotten stone for polishing them. 
And fourthly, with the diamond, two 
stones are rubbed in a peculiar manner 
the one against the other to cut the 
facets, and they are polished by means 
of the drop, and an iron lap, or skive , 
fed with diamond powder. 

From the comparatively small size 
of the stones and gems that are cut 
into facets, they cannot generally be 
held unassistedly in the fingers ; the 
stone is consequently cemented cen¬ 
trally upon the end of a round piece 
of wood, nearly like a drawing pencil. 
The stick, when held vertically, gives 
the position for grinding the central 
facet or table of the stone ; the stick is 
inclined to a certain angle for the 
eight, twelve or more facets, contigu¬ 
ous to the table ; of which facets, two, 
three, or four series are commonly re¬ 
quired at different inclinations ; and 
lastly, the horizontal position of the 
stick serves in cutting the girdle or 




THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


287 




central band around the exterior edge 
•of the stones. 

The several inclinations of the stick 
on which the stone is cemented, are 
easily determined by placing the upper 
-end of the stick into one of several 
holes in a vertical post, fixed alongside 
the lap, and this retains the inclina¬ 
tion very accurately and simply. 


CHOOSING WALL PAPER. 

Most persons when they go into a 
store to purchase paper for the walls 
•of their houses, are never satisfied un¬ 
less they overhaul a great number of 
patterns. Their object is to secure 
the prettiest style they can find — the 
best among the lot — and this course, 
in ordinary business, has a common 
sense appearance about it. But a rule 
of conduct, excellent and correct in 
the pursuit of one object, may be 
totally wrong in following after that 
of another, and this is the case in 
examining a great number of samples 
of printed paper at once. Many are 
so liable to get bewildered when a 
great variety of patterns are passed 
before them, that they frequently 
choose the poorest design of the lot. 
This is not surprising ; indeed it is 
in exact accordance with the laws of 
vision. 

It has been conclusively shown by 
M. Chevreul, the distinguished chemist 
in Paris, that the eye, in looking at 
color after color, is gradually under¬ 
going change, so that the character 
of each color is altered ; in short, the 
color is vitiated. An analogous result 
is unquestionably produced in the form 
of the patterns, as well as in their 
colors and proportions. The best way 
to select good and agreeable patterns 
of paper, therefore, is to examine 
only a few at once. 


BUTTER COOLER. 


Melted butter is all very well in its 
right place, but when butter is put 
upon the tea or breakfast table, having 
the appearance of being just out of 
the oven, it is anything but credit¬ 
able to the housekeeper, and far from 
satisfactory to those who eat it. Dry 
toast is positively spoilt if spread with 
soft butter; indeed, if butter cannot 
be brought to table at least firm, if 
not hard, it is better to keep it away 
altogether. Fortunately, however, it 
is not necessary to proceed to such 
desperate measures, as butter can be 
kept nice and cool in the hottest 
weather, and that in a very simple 
manner. Procure a large, new flower 
pot of sufficient size to cover the 
butter plate, and also a saucer large 
enough for the flower pot to rest in 
upside down; place a trivet or meat 
stand (such as is sent to the oven 
when a joint is baked) in a saucer, and 
put on this trivet a plate of butter; 
now fill the saucer with water, and 
turn the flower pot over the butter, so 
that its bottom edge will be below the 
water. The hole in the flower pot 
must be fitted with a cork ; the butter 
will then be in what we may call an 
air-tight chamber. Let the whole of 
the outside of the flower pot be thor¬ 
oughly drenched with water, and place 
it in as cool a spot as you can. If this 
be done over night, the butter will be 
as ‘‘firm as a rock” at breakfast time ; 
or, if placed there in the morning, the 
butter will be quite hard for use at tea 
hour. The reason of this is, that 
when water evaporates, it produces 
cold; the porous pot draws up the 
water, which in warm weather quickly 
evaporates from the sides, and as no 
warm air can get at the butter, it be¬ 
comes firm and cool in the hottest day. 









288 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


PLUMBAGO MINES — LEAD PENCILS. 


Every one knows whai a black lead 
pencil is, but it is not generally known 
that there is not a particle of lead in 
the pencil. The material variously 
known as black lead, graphite or plum¬ 
bago, is almost wholly composed of 
carbon. It probably owes its misnomer 
to the fact that previous to the em¬ 
ployment of graphite for making pen¬ 
cils, common lead was used, and this 
within the present century. For a 
long time the best graphite was obtain¬ 
ed, not in very large quantities, at 
Borrowdale, in the English county of 
Cumberland, where it was discovered 
in 1564, early in the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth, and pencils, much like those 
still in general use, were produced in 
the year following. As the supply of 
the graphite (known in Cumberland, 
while in the mine, by the title of wad), 
was not large, the British government, 
from the first, took great pains to pre¬ 
vent the exportation of the article, and 
even to limit its home sale to a supply 
just sufficient to meet the estimated 
demand. Graphite is found in various 
parts of Europe, and even in North 
America, but of very inferior quality. 
The Cumberland mines were worked 
only a few weeks in each year, yet the 
yield of wad was estimated at £40,000 
a year. While the graphite lasted, 
England had a monopoly in supplying 
the best pencils to the world. Year 
after year, for a century past the graph¬ 
ite deposit in Cumberland became u fine 
by degrees and gradually less.’ 1 The 
result was that graphite powder had to 
be compressed into a solid cake from 
which pencils could be supplied. A 
French variation, said to be an improve¬ 
ment, was to mix the powdered and 
purified graphite with clay, which is 
largely done still. 


Nearly one hundred and fifty years 
ago, the pencil manufacture commenced 
in England, and improved in France, 
was transplanted to the village of 
Stein, near Nuremberg, in Bavaria, 
and, little more than a century since, 
Casper Faber there began to make the 
pencils which continue to be made by 
his descendants, and bear the family 
name through the world. The present 
John Lothair Faber, great grandson of 
Casper, has been head of the firm since 
1839, and is not only very wealthy, but 
has recently been ennobled by the king 
of Bavaria. One of his brothers is. 
associated with him at Stein, in the 
processes of manufacture; the young¬ 
est of the three, Eberhard Faber, 
represents the firm, for the Western 
World, at New York. Stein is literally 
a town of pencil factories, of which 
Baron Faber is the ruler, taking care 
of the health, government, education, 
industry, thrift, and amusements of 
the inhabitants, and always living in 
their midst. It may be asked—how do 
the Fabers make lead pencils without 
the famous graphite from Cumberland?' 
It appears that twenty years ago John 
Peter Alibert, a Frenchman, resident in 
Asiatic Siberia, having heard of the 
gold discoveries in California, began to 
examine the sandy beds of various 
rivers flowing into the Arctic Ocean, 
lie found samples of pure graphite, 
evidently brought a considerable dis¬ 
tance by force of the stream, in one of 
the mountain gorges near Irkurtsk, 
and pursuing his discovery tracked 
back to a branch of the Salan Moun¬ 
tain range, on the very summit of 
Mount Batougal, 275 miles west of the 
town of Irkurtsk, near the Chinese 
frontier, in the midst of the rocky 
desert, and found pure graphite. After 
years of costly labor Alibert found an 
exhaustless deposit of graphite equal 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


289 


to the best ever taken from Cumber¬ 
land. Besides decorating and rewarding 
him, the Russian government changed 
the name of Mount Batougol to that 
of Mount Alibert. Nearly every 
crowned head in Europe has honored 
him. With the consent of the Russian 
government, Alibert now supplies Fa¬ 
ber s house exclusively with graphite 
from the mine in Asiatic Siberia. Pen¬ 
cils of this material were first made 
by Baron Faber in 1861, and were not 
introduced into the American market 
until 1865, from which time artists 
and others perceived and acknowledged 
their superiority. If the world were 
to endure a thousand years more, there 
is sufficient graphite in Mount Alibert 
to supply its population with good 
black lead pencils.— 


CLOTHES ON FIRE. 

Three persons out of four would rush 
right up to the burning individual and 
begin to paw with their hands without 
any definite aim. It is useless to tell 
the victim to do this or that or call 
for water. In fact, it is generally best 
not to say a word, but to seize a 
blanket from the bed or any woolen 
fabric — if none is at hand take any 
woolen material — hold the corners as 
far apart as you can, stretch them out 
higher than your head, and running 
boldly to the person make a motion of 
clasping in the arms, mostly about the 
shoulder. This instantly smothers the 
fire and saves the face. The next in¬ 
stant throw the person on the floor. 
This is an additional safety to the face 
and breath, and anv remnant of flame 
can be put out more leisurely. The 
next instant immerse the burnt part in 
cold water, and all pain will cease with 
the rapidity of lightning. Next get 
some common flour, remove the water, 


and cover the burnt parts with an 
inch in thickness of flour ; if possi¬ 
ble put the patient to bed, and do all 
that is possible to soothe until the 
physician arrives. Let the flour re¬ 
main until it falls off of itself, when a 
beautiful new skin can be i d. Un¬ 
less the burns are deep no other ap¬ 
plications are needed. The dry flour 
for burns is the most admirable rem¬ 
edy ever proposed, and the information 
ought to be imparted to all. The prin¬ 
ciple of its action is, that like the 
water it causes instant and perfect re¬ 
lief from pain by totally excluding all 
the air from the injured parts.— Scien¬ 
tific American. 


AUGER. 

It is supposed that the first boring- 
tool was an awl of some kind. Pliny 
says that the gimlet was invented by 
Daedalas, 1240 B. C. It may have had 
a hollow pod and a cross-head form of 
handle, but was without a screw point. 
Awls have been found in Egyptian 
tombs showing them to have been in 
use 1490 B. C. The auger with the 
twisted shank which makes itself dis¬ 
charging, was like many other import¬ 
ant inventions and discoveries, the 
result of an accident. The screw 
auger is an American invention dating 
back to the year 1774, when John 
White and Benjamin Brooke, of Ham¬ 
mer Hollow Valley Forge, Pennsyl¬ 
vania, noticed some boys boring holes 
in the ground with hoop iron. One of 
these becoming accidently twisted, the 
men noticed that as it turned the loose 
dirt was drawn up. Thinking it pos¬ 
sible that a tool for boring wood might 
be constructed on the same principle, 
it was immediately tried with the addi¬ 
tion of a screw point for drawing the 
cutting edge into the wood. The ex- 












290 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


periment proved eminently successful 
and led to the manufacture of large 
numbers of these augers. The oldest 
auger factory in the United States is 
that of Job T. Pugh, of Philadelphia, 
Penn., and was started over one hun¬ 
dred years ago. The first Pugh con¬ 
nected with the business was an 
apprentice to Benjamin Brooke, one of 
the original inventors, and in 1790 
they formed a partnership under the 
firm name of Brooke & Pugh. The 
business since that time has remained 
in the hands of successive generations 
of the family. There are also many 
other large manufactories which have 
achieved a lasting reputation in making 
augers and bits, suitable for boring in 
all kinds of wood, also an endless 
variety of what are called earth-boring 
augers, all claiming some superior ad¬ 
vantage over the others. 


SAFFRON. 

This drug is of considerable impor¬ 
tance to the materia medica , and is 
extensively cultivated in France and 
other countries. The true Saffron is a 
bulbous plant of the genus crocus, 
bearing flowers of a deep yellow color. 
It is also used by dyers, but not to the 
same extent as the safflower — also 
called bastard saffron. The latter is 
an annual of the genus carthamus, 
having a deep red fecula separated 
from orange-colored flowers. It is the 
base of what is known to dyers as 
Spanish red and China lake. 

In France entire fields are devoted 
to the cultivation of saffron; but the 
industry is chiefly confined to three 
Departments of the country, of which 
Loiret produces the best quality and 
largest amount. 

A saffron field is not in full bearing 


until the end of the second year, and 
as it is a very exhaustive crop, at the 
end of three years the land is in a very 
bad condition for future tillage. The 
average crop of the second and third 
years varies from ten to thirty kilo¬ 
grams per hectare, or from nine to 
twenty-seven pounds per acre of dry 
pistils. Each acre produces from six 
to seven hundred thousand bulbs, and 
each bulb two or three flowers. About 
thirty thousand flowers are required to 
produce two pounds of fresh pistils, 
but when dried they are reduced to 
one-fifth of that weight. The pistils 
are the only portion of the flower used; 
the rest is waste. 

The labor of picking these flowers is 
very great, and when the crop is abun¬ 
dant frequently engages a large num¬ 
ber of hands to have it properly 
secured. Farmers pay from lOd. to 4s. 
a pound for the picking, as the abun¬ 
dance of the crop or the necessities of 
the agriculturists may require. Saf¬ 
fron sells all the way from two to five 
dollars per lb. The latter price, how¬ 
ever, is unusual in ordinary years, and 
only the finest will command such 
rates. 

When the pistils are separated from 
the rest of the flower they are dried by 
placing a small quantity in a horse¬ 
hair sieve over a portable charcoal 
furnace, and this operation is repeated 
until the whole product is ready for 
market. 

It is bought up for exportation by 
buyers from Germany and other coun¬ 
tries, and after it has passed into 
second hands is often adulterated by an 
admixture with foreign substances. 
This is frequently so skillfully per¬ 
formed as almost to defy detection 
except by chemical examination. A 
recent case came up for investigation. 
A quantity of what was sold for “ Ger- 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


291 


man Saffron, 11 by a wholesale druggist, 
proved to be slireds of Campeachy log¬ 
wood and fustic, ingeniously blended 
together by being moistened with a 
small quantity of heavy syrup. The 
deception was so perfect that an ex¬ 
perienced retailer bought the mixture 
and sold it for the genuine article. 

In medical practice the flowers and 
root of saffron are used as a stimulant 
and anti-spasmodic. 


ANCIENT ARTILLERY. 

It is curious that the dates of the 
two great discoveries of modern times 
— printing and gunpowder—should 
be involved in uncertainty, as well as 
the names of their respective discover¬ 
ers. To Bartholdus Schwartz is pop¬ 
ularly ascribed the discovery of gun¬ 
powder in the year 1320, though Roger 
Bacon in his u Magnum Opus,” in 
1270, mentions its ingredients, and 
how it might be used for propelling 
projectiles; while he acquired his in¬ 
formation from a manuscript of Mar¬ 
cus Grsecus, the date of which is 
unknown, being somewhat vaguely 
ascribed to some time between the 
ninth and twelfth centuries. Indeed 
gunpowder is supposed to have been 
known at a much earlier date, some 
writers even stating that it was in use 
among the Eastern nations as far back 
as 355 years before Christ. Some au¬ 
thors, again, would connect gunpow¬ 
der with Greek fire, which has been 
known in the East from time imme¬ 
morial, and which i^said to have been 
introduced into Europe in 673 at the 
siege of Constantinople, and that it 
was not till the mixture of its ingredi¬ 
ents was better known that it was used 
for propelling projectiles. When it 
was first used in Europe for that pur¬ 
pose is likewise uncertain. To the 


Moors in Spain is generally ascribed 
the introduction of artillery in Europe. 
According to Conde it was used by 
them at the siege of Saragossa in 1118 
—150 years before Roger Bacon’s re¬ 
puted discovery. In 1306 —1308, Gib¬ 
raltar was lost to the Moors through 
the artillery of the besiegers; and 
when Alphonso the Eleventh of Cas¬ 
tile, in 1343, besieged the town of 
Algesiras, the Moorish garrison threw 
u thunderbolts ” among their enemies 
from long mortars or troughs of iron. 
Jean Villani states that the English 
had guns at the battle of Creoy in 
1346, but this is not confirmed by 
Froissart or other historians of the 
battle ; while John Barbour, Archdea¬ 
con of Aberdeen, in his account of 
Edward the Third’s first expedition 
against the Scots in 1327, mentions 
that with the royal army were u crakys 
of war,” which are supposed to have 
been cannon. However doubtful may 
be the date of their first introduction 
into Europe, it is certain that they had 
not come generally into use as instru¬ 
ments of warfare till the latter part of 
the fourteenth century, which may 
account for the statement of some 
authors that guns were first used by 
the Venetians against the Genoese in 
1378. 

As may be supposed, they were at 
first of very rough construction, and 
were called bombardes, irom the word 
bombas, indicative of the noise made 
in their discharge. They were made 
either of hammered iron, or iron bars 
soldered and welded together and 
strengthened with iron hoops; or 
sometimes of iron and copper plates, 
with lead run between them, and cov¬ 
ered with wood or hides. They were 
wider at the mouth than at the cham¬ 
ber, and were mostly of ponderous size 
and of very great length. Froissart 






292 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


gives an account of a great gun used 
by Philip Yon Artaveld at the siege of 
Oudenarde in 1382. “They had also, 
the more to alarm the garrison, fired a 
bombarde of a very great size, which 
was fifty feet in length, and shot stones 
of an immense weight. When they 
fired off this bombarde, it might be 
heard five leagues off in the daytime 
and ten at nighta statement which 
is of course open to doubt in slightly 
skeptical minds. 

The balls were of stone, and, as 
Froissart says, were often of “ immense 
weight.” Those fired by the famous 
brass cannon of Mahomet the Second, 
used at the siege of Constantinople in 
1443, weighed six hundred pounds. 
Though the walls of a town or fortress 
were then not built to resist artillery, 
yet the effects of these great masses 
hurled against them were not so great 
as might be supposed. The unwieldy 
size of the guns made them difficult to 
work, and their weight rendered them 
almost immovable. From these cir¬ 
cumstances some great bombardes ac¬ 
quired the name of “ bourgeoise,” from 
their constant residence in one place. 
Even when the difficulties of trans¬ 
port had been overcome, the damage 
done by one discharge was easily re¬ 
paired before another had time to 
enlarge the breach. The bombardes 
used by the Venetians at the siege of 
Chiozza, in 1380, were fired only once 
in twenty-four hours. They were 
loaded under cover of the night, to be 
ready to discharge in the day-time. 
Mahomet’s cannon, above mentioned, 
though nearly a century afterwards, 
was fired but seven times a day, and 
for its transport required a carriage of 
thirty wagons linked together and 
drawn by sixty oxen, with two hun¬ 
dred men on each side to support it 
and assist its progress ; while it took 


two months to convey it one hundred 
and fifty miles. 

It may thus be easily understood 
that a siege was not so formidable an 
affair as it afterwards became. It 
was not till the latter part of the fif¬ 
teenth century that the old bombardes 
were replaced by brass guns of a some¬ 
what lighter description and the stone 
changed for metal balls. The French 
and Germans — the former especially 
— excelled in their ordnance, both in 
its construction and improvement, and 
in the working of the pieces. To 
Charles the Eighth of France belongs 
the credit of the first organized system 
of artillery. On his expedition to 
Naples, in 1494, he had a train of ord¬ 
nance consisting of bronzed cannon of 
about eight feet in length, and many 
smaller pieces. They were drawn by 
horses, and from their lightness were 
easily transported. 

Bombs came from Germany, but at 
what date is uncertain. According to 
one author —Yalturinus — they were 
invented about 1538; while Strada 
says that they were first used in 1588, 
at the siege of Vakterdone, in Gueld- 
ers, and were invented by an inhabi¬ 
tant of Nenlo, a maker of fireworks. 
When the first trial of them was made 
at Yenlo, a shell burst through a 
house, and so effectually set it on fire 
that the conflagration was not extin¬ 
guished until one-half the town had 
been burnt. 

The howitzer — a smaller kind of 
mortar mounted on a carriage — also 
came from Germany in 1593 or 1594. 
That which distinguishes it from a 
mortar is, that the trunnions, or 
knobs, by which it is fastened to the 
stand, are in the middle, while those of 
the mortar are at the end of the piece. 

On particular emergencies guns are 
said to have been made of jacked 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATOIN. 


2 93 


leather ; but it is more probable that 
the outsides only were of that mater¬ 
ial, like the cannons of boiled leather 
of Gustavus Adolphus, which, from 
their lightness — they were drawn 
easily by two men — mainly contribu¬ 
ted to his victory at Leipsic. A coat¬ 
ing of leather, boiled and varnished, 
was spread over the copper tubes. 

From the terror they inspired, and 
from their deadly and quick move¬ 
ments, fanciful and often appropriate 
names of serpents and birds of prey 
were given to great guns. Lady Percy 
tells Hotspur that he talks in his 
sleep of “basilisks, of cannon, cul- 
verin the last is a corruption of col- 
ouverine — a hawk. There were like¬ 
wise falcons and falconets, minions 
and sakers. 

Chambered pieces, loaded at the 
breach, for throwing stones princi¬ 
pally, were known by the name of 
cannon, perriers, or pattereros. They 
were sometimes mounted, two at a 
time, on carriages called spingards. 
There were also similar but smaller 
pieces, used mostly on shipboard, 
called portpieces, stock fowlers, sling- 
pieces, portingale bases, and when 
employed in towers pierced with loop¬ 
holes, they received the appropriate 
name of “ murtherers.’ 


REMOVAL OF DRY PUTTY. 

According to an English journal, 
the difficulty of removing hard putty 
from a window sash can be obviated 
with great readiness by simply apply¬ 
ing a piece of heated metal, such as a 
soldering-iron or other similar imple¬ 
ment. When heated (but not red-hot) 
the iron is to be passed slowly over 
the putty, thereby rendering the latter 
50 soft that it will part from the wood 
without any trouble. 


SIGNING THE DECLARATION. 


Mr. Jefferson used to relate, with 
much merriment, that the final sign¬ 
ing of the Declaration of Independ¬ 
ence was hastened by an absurdly 
trivial cause. Near the hall in which 
the debates were then held was a 
livery stable from which swarms of 
flies came into the open windows and 
assailed the silk-stockinged legs of the 
honorable members. Handkerchief in 
hand, they lashed the flies with such 
vigor as they could command on a July 
afternoon; but the annoyance became 
at length so extreme as to render them 
impatient at delay, and they made 
haste to bring the momentous busi¬ 
ness to a conclusion. After such a 
long and severe strain upon their 
minds, members seem to have indulged 
in many jocular observations as they 
stood around the table. Tradition has 
it that when John Hancock affixed his 
magnificent signature to the paper, he 
said : “ There, John Bull may read my 
name without spectacles !” Tradition, 
also, will never relinquish the pleasure 
of repeating that, when Mr. Hancock 
reminded the members of the necessity 
of hanging together, Dr. Franklin 
was ready with his “ Yes, we must in¬ 
deed all hang together, or else, most 
assuredly, we shall all hang separate¬ 
ly/’ And this may have suggested to 
the portly Harrison — “a luxurious, 
heavy gentleman,” as John Adams 
described him — his remark to slender 
Eldridge Gerry, that when the hanging 
came he should have the advantage, 
for poor Gerry would be kicking in 
the air long after it was all over with 
himself. French critics censure Shake¬ 
speare for mixing buffoonery with 
scenes of the deepest tragic interest. 
But here we find one of the most im¬ 
portant assemblies ever convened, at 









294 


THE PEOPLES' LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the supreme moment of its existence, 
while performing the act which gives 
it its rank among deliberate bodies, 
cracking jokes, and hurrying up to the 
table to sign, in order to get away 
from the flies. It is precisely so that 
Shakespeare would have imagined the 
scene .—James Parton . 


MOSAIC AND ENAMEL. 

Mosaic is a kind of inlay, producing 
a picture or pattern by the due selec¬ 
tion of colors in the pieces employed. 
The substance may be wood, stone, 
marble, porcelain, terra-cotta, enamel 
or colored glass, and it may be cut 
into cubes, hexagons, triangles or vari¬ 
ous other forms; the chief conditions 
being that the pieces should be small 
in size, variously colored and placed in 
such juxtaposition as to bring the 
proper tints into the proper places. 
The marble pavement under the dome 
of St. Paul’s, the wooden flooring and 
paneling done in marquetry, the inlay¬ 
ing of cabinet work known by the 
names of marquetry and buhl work, 
the intricate patterns of Tunbridge 
ware toys, the nicely fitting lids of 
Scotch snuff boxes—all are examples 
of mosaic so far as the principle is 
concerned; but it is generally meant, 
in art, that a mosaic is a picture, 
which must have the mind of an artist 
thrown into it before the mechanical 
working begins. 

Enamel is really nothing more than 
opaque glass, the opacity being pro¬ 
duced by the addition of some one or 
more among many metallic oxides to 
the other ingredients. According to 
the color required, so is the metallic 
element chosen—lead or antimony to 
produce yellow, iron to produce red, 
gold for a more intense and beautiful 
red, copper for green, cobalt for blue, 


and various combinations for other 
colors. Enamel paintings are plates of 
copper, silver or gold, on which the 
picture is produced by using the 
enamel in the form of paint, and then 
vitrifying it by the heat of an oven. 

Enameled watch dials have a thin 
coating of white enamel on a copper 
disk or plate, while the figures and 
spots are painted in black enamel, 
vitrified by heat. 

Now the use of enamel for mosaic 
is simply the substitution of cubes or 
small pieces of colored enamel for 
pieces of other substances. They are 
occasionally employed, like colored 
glass, with a part of the effect due to 
semi-transparency; but more frequent¬ 
ly they are quite opaque, only to be 
looked at by reflected light. The 
beautiful Pompeiian mosaic of the 
“ Battle of Issus” is of enamel. The 
mosaics of St. Peter’s are also of en¬ 
amel. So numerous are the gradations 
of tint necessary to produce all the 
lights and shades of an elaborate pic¬ 
ture, that the mosaic workshops at the 
Vatican are said to contain no less 
than twenty thousand varieties, all 
methodically sorted and arranged. 
Some of the larger and more ambitious 
works have taken ten, fifteen, or even 
twenty years to execute. The dura¬ 
bility of the material is fully as great 
as that of stone itself, insomuch that 
the mosaic pictures of St. Peter’s, so 
far as atmospheric and climatic influ¬ 
ences are concerned, may possibly last 
as long as the structures which they 
adorn. The mode of proceeding is 
pretty much as follows : A ground or 
support is prepared, either a metal 
plate or a slab of travertine, the proper 
size and shape of the picture, and this 
is surrounded with a raised rim of iron. 
Into the recess thus formed is intro¬ 
duced a cement or stucco mixed to a 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


295 


pasty state, and consisting of pounded 
travertine, carbon of lime, mastic and 
linseed oil. The tesserae, cubes or 
small pieces of enamel (some barely 
larger than a pin’s head) are selected 
of the proper colors, tints and shades, 
and imbedded one by one in the cement. 
Only so much cement is laid in as can 
be filled with tesserae in one day, in 
order that it may retain sufficient soft¬ 
ness. It eventually hardens to the 
consistence of stone. When the whole 
picture is finished, the surface is rubbed 
smooth and made dull or polished ac¬ 
cording to the kind of effect intended 
to be produced. 


HOW ELECTROTYPES ARE MADE. 

Conflicting statements have been 
made in regard to the originators of 
the process of manufacturing electro¬ 
type plates for printing. It is alleged 
that the discoveries which led directly 
to it were made, about the same period, 
a short time before 1840, by Professor 
Jacobi, of St, Petersburg, Russia, by 
Thomas Spencer, of Liverpool, and by 
J. C. Jordan, of London. Joseph A. 
Adams, a wood-engraver of New York, 
also commenced experiments in electro¬ 
typing plates from wood-cuts in 1839, 
and produced a plate which was print¬ 
ed from in Mapes’ Magazine in 1841. 
Some one of the best of English au¬ 
thorities on Electro-Metallurgy and 
Electro typing, says that, so far as he 
knows, the London Journal for April, 
1840, contained the first specimen of 
printing from an electrotype, by New¬ 
ton, and that it was a small, rough 
sketch. 

The galvanic battery, as improved 
and enlarged in its scope by Yolta in 
1800, furnishes the base of the art ofj 
electrotyping. Various improvements 
in the form and materials of batteries 


have been made, but all batteries are 
constructed on the principles laid down 
by Yolta. 

In preparing a form for electrotyp¬ 
ing, the books say that type-high 
spaces and quadrats must be used ; but 
this is not absolutely necessary, and in 
practice low spaces and low quadrats 
are often employed. The form, how¬ 
ever should be accurately justified, 
tightly locked up, and well protected 
on all sides by high slugs or type-high 
bearers. The first process of the elec¬ 
trotyper, after seeing that a type-high 
form or engraving is perfectly clean, is 
to cover it with a finely powdered 
black-lead or plumbago, and to subse¬ 
quently remove all excess of black-lead, 
by rubbing the palm of the hand over 
the surface of the type or wood-cut. 
This is done to facilitate the with¬ 
drawal of the form from the mould. 
The moulding composition is made of 
the best unadulterated yellow wax, to 
which, in cold rooms or cold weather, 
from five to twenty per cent, of virgin 
wax is added. The wax is boiled, to 
prepare it for use, and then poured 
into a moulding-case, which is a flat 
brass pan. The form to be electro- 
typed being placed on the bed of an 
electrotyper's press, the wax in the 
moulding-case is placed upon the face 
of the form, and an impression taken. 

After this impression is taken and 
the form and mould are separated, the 
mould next goes through the process 
of building, which consists in dropping 
heated wax upon such portions as 
should be deeply sunk in the finished 
electrotype plate. Where there is a 
large body of quadrats, for instance, in 
a form, the corresponding part of the 
mould should be raised by a deposit of 
melted wax. Great skill is displayed 
by some electrotypers in building. 
They use a heated building-iron, or 









296 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


piece of iron shaped something like a 
poker, of convenient length, with a 
sharp point, which is applied to a strip 
of dry wax until some of the wax ad¬ 
heres to it; this wax is dropped, in a 
melted state, upon the portions of the 
mould which are to be raised ; and it 
requires a steady hand to drop the 
melted wax exactly where it is needed, 
and to avoid dropping it upon any 
spot where it is not needed. After the 
building process is completed, the wax 
mould is next black-leaded,—very 
pure, fine, and lustrous black-lead 
being required for this purpose. It 
is also necessary that the entire sur¬ 
face of the mould should be very 
effectually covered with this substance, 
to insure a perfect deposit of the cop¬ 
per ; and, to facilitate this operation, a 
black-leading machine is used. 

After the mould is black-leaded, 
every particle of superfluous black- 
lead is removed by blowing it off, with 
a pair of bellows having a broad noz¬ 
zle. The mould undergoes a further 
preparation, by having the back of the 
moulding-pan coated with wax, so that 
copper will not be deposited upon it, 
and also by attaching to a point near 
the face of the mould a bit of metal, 
or adopting some similar method for 
hastening the deposit of the copper on 
the black-leaded surface. It is then 
quickly immersed in one of the apart¬ 
ments of the battery, where the pro¬ 
cess of dropping a copper solution 
upon the black leaded surface of the 
mould is continued until a solid sur¬ 
face is formed, which, though it is 
scarcely thicker than a man’s thumb¬ 
nail, forms, when properly backed, the 
best and most enduring surface for 
letter-press printing that has ever been 
discovered. The battery itself is one 
of the marvels of modern science, be¬ 
ing an offshoot of a long series of 


attempts to utilize discoveries apper¬ 
taining to the mysterious domain of 
electricity. It will suffice here to say 
that in one of the chambers of the 
battery an acid bath is made of sul¬ 
phuric acid dissolved in water; this 
solution is acted upon by zinc plates 
and other appliances; and a connec¬ 
tion akin to the wonders of the tele¬ 
graph is made by wires or rods, 
or both, with the chambers in 
which the forms are deposited, and 
with the form itself,— the result of all 
these and auxilliary processes being 
that copper, after its reduction to a 
liquid, is subsequently concentrated in 
a shape and consistency adapted to the 
printer’s use. 

After the shell, as it is technically 
termed, is formed in the battery, it 
must next be carefully removed from 
the mould, and all wax taken from it. 
This is done by pouring hot water 
gently over the mould, or by placing it 
in a steam-heating table, and super¬ 
fluous wax is removed by a heated 
solution of common potash. The 
other processes consist of trimming 
the shell, or soldering to it tin, and 
subsequently straightening, backing, 
shaving and finishing it. Tin adheres 
readily to copper; a backing metal 
composed of four parts of tin, five of 
antimony, and ninety-one of lead ad¬ 
heres readily to tin; and by a combi¬ 
nation of these metals, the thin 
electrotype shell is thickened to the 
extent requisite for use as a plate. 


A good way to destroy moths is to 
take a coarse crash towel and wring it 
out of clean water. Spread it smooth¬ 
ly on the carpet, then iron it dry with 
a hot iron, repeating the operation on 
all suspected places, and those least 
used. 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


297 


FIRE-ALARM BELLS. 


The use of bells to sound alarms :i> 
•case of danger from floods and other 
impending dangers iz of very ancient 
origin. It is said that in the year 
610, when Sens was besieged, the 
Bishop of Orleans ordered the bells of 
St. Stephen to be rung, and the sound 
so frightened the assailants that they 
abandoned the siege. When Macbeth 
shut himself in the fortress of Dunsin- 
nane, and it was announced than Bir- 
nam Wood was moving on the castle, 
he cried out in his desperation,— 

“King the alarum bell! Blow wind! Come wreck! 

At least we’ll die with harness on oar hack.” 

In later years the use of bells has 
become so systemized as not only to 
sound the alarm of fire, but to indi¬ 
cate the locality of the danger, and 
there are several cities in the United 
States, in which, by means of elec¬ 
tricity, every fire bell may at once an¬ 
nounce this fact. 


TO MAKE COURT PLASTER. 


Soak isinglass in a little warm water 
for twenty-four hours ; then evaporate 
nearly all the water by a gentle heat, 
dissolve the residue in a little proof 
spirits of wine, end strain the whole 
through a piece of open linen. The 
strained mass should be a stiff jelly 
when cool. Now, extend a piece o_ 
silk on a wooden frame, and fix it 
tight with taebs and pack thread. 
Melt the jelly and apply it to the silk 
thinly with a hair brush. A second 
coating must be applied when the first 
has dried. When both are dry, cover 
the whole surface with two or three 
coatings o: tne Balsam of Peru, ap¬ 
plied in the same way. Plaster thus 
made is very pliable and never breaks. 


CURE FOR NEURALGIA. 

The following cure for neuralgia is 
given by the Newark Gazette: “ A 
friend who suffered horribly from 
neuralgia, hearing of a noted phys¬ 
ician in Germany who invariably cured 
the disease, crossed the ocean and 
visited Germany for treatment. He 
was permanently cured after a short 
sc'curn, and the doctor freely gave 
him the simple remedy used, which 
was nothing but poultice and tea 
made from our common field thistle. 
The leaves are macerated and used on 
the parts afflicted, as a poultice, while 
a small quantity of the loaves are 
boiled down to a pint, and a small 
wine glass of the decoction drank be¬ 
fore each meal. Cur friend says he 
has never known it to fail of giving 
relief, while in almost every case it 
has effected a cure.” 


SPECTACLES. 


Spectacles are said to be of Asiatic 
origin, and are of great antiquity in 
China. Roger Bacon, who was born at 
Ilchester, in Somersetshire, in 1214, 
writes: This instrument, a plano-con¬ 
vex glass or large segment of a sphere, 
is useful to old men and to those who 
have weak eyes, for they may see the 
smallest letters sufficiently magnified. 
It is also claimed that Alexander de 
Spina, a monk of Pisa, who died in 
1313, was the inventor, but it is be¬ 
lieved to be anticipated by this date of 
Bacon’s. In 1463, John Buret, of 
Burg, St. Edmunds, left by will to one 
of the monks, his ivory tablets and a 
pair of silver-gilt spectacles. Also in 
the fifteenth century, from the tapistry 
of Nancy, is represented a scribe with 
spectacles on nose and all the apparatus 
for writing. 















298 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


THE SODA LAKES OF MEXICO. 

The soda lakes of Mexico, from the 
waters of which crude soda is largely 
manufactured, are among the natural 
sources of wealth to the country, ^he 
lake of Tescoco, a short distance from 
the capital of Mexico, and communi¬ 
cating with the city by means of a 
canal, is one of the greatest natural 
curiosities of that country. In the 
center is a barren island, with a hill 
composed of volcanic rock, and known 
as El Penon de los Bancos, or rock of 
the baths, rising from the surface. 
This desolate spot is famous for the 
manufacture of crude soda, or teques- 
quite, a manufacture not more remark¬ 
able for its primitive method than its 
vast resources. The earth of the val¬ 
ley is impregnated with a species of 
soda, and Lake Tescoco itself is a con¬ 
centrated solution of soda. It contains 
an immense amount of the salts of 
sodium, chiefly the chloride of sodium 
and the carbonate of soda. The lak3 
has great surface and small depth, and 
with a rainy season of four months 
and a dry season of eight, its range of 
expansion and contraction is 220 
square miles at its maximum to 80 
square miles at its minimum. A cal¬ 
culation of the contents of the lake 
was made in 1851, when the lake was 
considerably contracted, and the pro¬ 
portion of solid matter was ascertained 
to be not less than 18 per cent. The 
Penon soda stills are not numerous, 
but illustrate the rude principle at work 
all around the lake. They are simply 
mounds of accumulated dark, bluish 
mold, on which large round holes are 
made here and there. In these holes 
bags are placed, and in the bag the im¬ 
pregnated, frosty-looking earth found 
every morning along the lake. Over 
this earth water is poured, and the 


liquor which sinks through the dirt,., 
and is drained from the bag, passes 
into a vessel below. The solution thus 
caught is evaporated over a fire, and 
tequesquite is the result. This is the 
whole process, which is the same that 
was used in the days of Montezuma. 
With this primitive system of manu¬ 
facture, the lake, according to the 
estimates of the School of Mining in 
the city of Mexico, produces annually 
1,680,000 pounds of crystallized or 
pure soda, and 3,696,000 pounds of 
tequesquite or impure soda. 


THE BANYAN TREE. 


The Banyan (Ficus Indica) is indig¬ 
enous to India only. I call it one of 
tkr “kings of the forest,” because no 
other of the vegetable giants ever 
measured a tithe of five acres in cir¬ 
cuit, or afforded shelter from the torrid 
sun ot one time to one-tenth of an 
army of ten thousand men. No one 
who ever spent the long noon-tide of 
an Indian day under the capacious 
shadow of a banyan tree, or slept un 
injured during successive nights under 
the protection from dews and rains of 
its shingled foliage, or strolled leisurely 
for hours along avenues and foot-paths 
bordered by flowering’ shr v. .v_» o 
cooled by gurgling streamlets, all with¬ 
in the boundaries of the repeating 
branches of a single tree, will be dis¬ 
posed to dispute the claims of the ban¬ 
yan to be counted as one of the three’ 
monarchs of the woods. 

When a banyan first springs from 
its seed, its method of growth is nor¬ 
mal. Like oak, or elm, or beech, or 
maple, it grows progressively through 
its different stages of shoot, and plant, 
and shrub, and sapling, and tree. 
There is nothing about it that is pecu- 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION 


299 


liar. It observes the ordinary routine 
of vegetable life. Rising in height 
from year to year, it puts forth limbs 
which are clothed in foliage. All o\ or 
the Orient there are banyans, still 
short of their hundred yea^s of age, 
which are in no respect peculiar. Like 
other denizens of the forest, the stran¬ 
ger would pass them by unnoticed. 
But when its first century is passed, 
and its burden of successors becomes 
oppressive, like a hale old fellow of the 
human race, it seeks support in its 
children. 

Every one is familiar with the fact 
that different trees shoot out their 
limbs at different angles to the trunk. 
The Lombardy poplar, in this respect, 
varies widely from the elm, and the 
larch from the willow. The English 
oak-branch leaves the parent stem at 
so high an angle as to be almost 
horizontal. The banyan does the 
same. But the latter has a length 
that surpasses the former almost as 
much as a ship’s cable does a coach¬ 
man’s whiplash. Now, it is a well- 
known law in mechanics, that the 
longer the arm the more powerful is 
the lever. The branch of the English 
oak ceases to grow beyond the point 
where the lever power would wrench it 
from the stem. The branch of the 
banyan does not. One stops at five- 
and-twentv feet; the other not even 
at five hundred. Provision must be 
made, therefore, to give the latter sup¬ 
port, and its wonderful peculiarity is, 
that nature has made such provision. 

In the banyan, when a horizontal 
branch has been put forth to such a 
length as to render it difficult to main¬ 
tain itself without breaking, it lowers 
down from its end one or two more 
roots, which, entering the ground, 
send forth rootlets, and themselves be¬ 
come new stems. In due time the 


horizontal branches, which were once 
in danger of being destroyed by their 
own weight, are as easily supported by 
their pillars as a bridge is by its piers. 
So the process goes on. Lateral 
branches shoot out from the main 
limbs, which latter are constantly 
growing till they reach gigantic size. 
These lateral branches also put down 
stems and shoot out branchlets, until 
it comes to pass that, in place of a 
single tree, there is a wondrous colon- 
ade of stems, supporting as many nat¬ 
ural rafters, on which repose dense 
canopies of foliage.— 


DRINKING WATER. 


Dr. Hall is opposed to the immoder¬ 
ate use of water for a drink. He 
says : “ The longer one puts off drink¬ 
ing water in the morning, especially 
in the Summer, the less he will require 
during the day. If much is drunk 
during the forenoon, the thirst often 
increases, and a very unpleasant dull¬ 
ness is observed, in addition to a me¬ 
tallic taste in the mouth. The less 
water a man drinks the better for him, 
beyond a moderate amount. The more ’ 
water a man drinxs the more strength 
he has to expend in getting rid of it; 
for all the fluids taken into the system 
must be carried out, and as there is 
but little nourishment in water, tea, 
coffee, beer, and the like, more strength 
is expended in conveying them out of 
tne system than they impart to it. 
The more a man drinks, the more he 
must perspire, either by the lungs or 
through the skin. The more he per¬ 
spires the more carbon it takes from 
the system, but this carbon is neces¬ 
sary for nutrition; hence, the less a 
man is nourished the less strength he 
has. The more liquids used the 







300 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


greater must be the amount of urina¬ 
tion ; but this detracts a proportional 
amount of albumen from the system, 
and it is the albumen in the food 
that strengthens us. Drinking wa¬ 
ter diminishes the strength in two 
ways, and yet many are under the 
impression that the more water swal¬ 
lowed, the more thoroughly is the 
system “ washed out.” Thus, the less 
we drink at meals, the better for us. 
If the amount were limited to a single 
cup of hot tea or hot milk and water 
at each meal, an immeasurable good 
would result to all. Many persons 
have fallen into the practice of drink¬ 
ing several glasses of cold water or 
several cups of hot tea at meals, out 
of mere habit. All such would be 
greatly benefited by breaking it up at 
once. It may be well to drink a little 
at each meal, and perhaps it may be 
found that in all cases it is better to 
take a single cup of hot tea at each 
meal than a glass of cold water, how¬ 
ever pure. 


EBONY. 

Of this wood, there are several vari¬ 
eties in the market, the only one ser¬ 
viceable to the carver being one with 
a close and even grain, so close, 
indeed, that under the gouge it 
appears to have no fibre whatever. 
The hardness renders it extremely 
difficult to work, and for this reason 
ebony carvings are of great value. 
The great defect which this wood has 
is its tendency to exfoliate and to split. 
An imitation ebony is sometimes 
offered, which is made by soaking 
pear-wood in an iron and tanning dye- 
beck for a week or more. The color 
penetrates to the very heart of the 
wood, so that the cut is as black as 
ebony. 


FEATS OF MEMORY. 


Perhaps the most interesting feature 
with regard to the human memory 
that has been elicited by psycologists 
in their endeavors to find out what it 
is and in what it consists, is the capac¬ 
ity for special training which ordinary 
memories possess. Hinder this train¬ 
ing average men are able to perform 
positive feats quite as a matter of 
course without eliciting our special 
wonder. Who, for example, has ever 
considered the case of a conductor of a 
Third avenue car when the unpleasant 
vehicle is most unpleasantly loaded 
down? He knows every person who 
has paid the fare, and pounces down 
upon the newcomers who have not 
with unswerving accuracy. New 
hands and dishonest men occasionally 
ask for the fare a second time, but this 
is of rare occurrence. Gentlemen who 
go every day to Harlem by this most 
dismal and uncivilized conveyance will 
admit that such a demand hardly 
occurs once in three years. And yet 
these conductors are not men of even 
average intellectual power, or of aver¬ 
age memory, and their development 
simply comes from training. The 
conductor, however, of a New York 
Central train shows this power, or 
this possibility of training, in a much 
stronger light. Like his cogener of 
the Third avenue horse-line, his intel¬ 
lect and memory are below the aver¬ 
age, and yet from the time he becomes 
a conductor he accomplishes remarka¬ 
ble feats of memory. There are from 
five to eight, sometimes as many as 
thirteen carriages filled with passen¬ 
gers in a train. He sees the ticket of 
each once only, and though there are 
several hundreds of them, he knows 
exactly where the new arrivals have 
seated themselves, where to look for 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


301 


them, nor does he trouble any of the 
others to show their tickets. This is a 
simple thing to write, but in the mind 
must be a complex arrangement. He 
must have every carriage, so to speak, 
abstracted in his mind with all its oc¬ 
cupants, and the little details by which 
he knows them and associates them 
with their tickets. In No. 1, for ex¬ 
ample, old man and boy with satchel, 
Yonkers; fat woman with red face, 
Yonkers ; pretty young lady, Tarry- 
town ; plain young lady with seal-skin 
jacket, Yonkers ; man with red mus¬ 
tache, Utica ; two old gentlemen, both 
Rome ; fat lady with smart hat, and 
pretty ditto, Tarry town,— and so on 
throughout the whole carriage. Then 
all the carriages are similarly treated, 
and the man’s mind becomes a series 
of maps, in which every seat, with its 
occupant, is succinctly drawn. Should 
a man who has shown his ticket lose it, 
there will be no trouble when the cir¬ 
cumstance is explained, for the con¬ 
ductor is sure to remember having 
seen it. And, what is stranger, the 
delinquent will appeal confidently to 
the conductor’s memory. Some years 
ago there was a female who used to 
travel on the New York Central, and 
being of an avaricious and saving dis¬ 
position, she hit upon the device of 
taking her ticket for a station thirty 
miles short of her destination, and 
then declaring, after she had given up 
her ticket, that it had been for the 
more distant place. The conductor, 
strong in his trained niemor}^, insisted 
upon it that the female’s ticket had 
been for the shorter distance and that 
she must pay the additional fare; but 
she resisted, and the voice of the 
passengers being on the woman’s side, 
she triumphed. But the word was 
passed among all the conductors, 
and the next time that the lady 


traveled on the line, when the con¬ 
ductor (not the same one) came to 
take the tickets, and she offered hers, 
he recognized her, and curtly said: 
“Madam, in order that there may be 
no mistake this time I’ll take your 
ticket when you are prepared to leave 
the car.” She saw that she was found 
out, and paid up without demur. All 
this came from training. And the 
woman’s sheme, though ingenious, 
was open to this defect, that she had 
not taken into consideration the mus¬ 
cular memory of a conductor, rendered 
abnormally powerful by exercise and 
by a certain power of will which it 
seems human beings can exert when¬ 
ever they are compelled by self-interest.. 


HISTORY OF POTTERY. 

Vessels made of baked earth capable 
of holding liquids doubtless preceded 
those of metals. It existed among nar- 
tions of the highest antiquity when 
still in a very rude state. Bricks were 
made and used at the Tower of Babel 
2200 years before the commencement 
of the Christian er^. The coarse kind 
of red pottery had iDeen made in En¬ 
gland from time immemorial, being in 
ancient times chiefly manufactured at 
the place still called the Potteries, in 
Staffordshire, celebrated for its variety 
of earthenware. A great improve¬ 
ment was introduced at the potteries 
in Staffordshire, in 1690, by two broth¬ 
ers, named Ebers, from Nuremberg. 
They manufactured a new kind of fine 
earthen-ware, of red clay, which they 
glazed without lead and by the use of 
common salt alone; notwithstanding: 
the obvious advantage of this new 
glazing, in consequence of some jeal¬ 
ousy among the neighbors from the 
process being kept a secret, they 
obliged the strangers to leave the 








302 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


country; but not before the art had 
been learned by a workman, named 
Astbury, who had made himself ac¬ 
quainted with every part of the pro¬ 
cess and who afterwards practised it. 
Common brown stone ware was 
probably the produce of the same peri¬ 
od, having been made in various parts 
of Europe, ever since the fifteenth cen¬ 
tury. The manufacture of it was 
brought from Holland, by some potters 
who settled at Lambeth. It had the 
property of bearing the heat of fire, 
which was not the case with the red- 
ware. To Astbury, already mentioned, 
is ascribed a great improvement in 
pottery, the introduction of flints, 
calcined and ground to be mixed with 
clay from which a better white earth¬ 
enware was made. It is said that 
accident led to this discovery. While 
traveling to London, on horseback, in 
1720, Astbury had occasion at Dunsta¬ 
ble, to seek a remedy for a disorder in 
his horse’s eye, when the ostler at the 
inn, burning a flint, reduced it by 
pounding to a fine powder, which he 
blew into the diseased eye to effect a 
cure. The potter'observing the beau¬ 
tiful white color of the flint after cal¬ 
cination, instantly conceived the use 
to which it might be applied to his art 
by mixing it in his clay; and thus 
made the first white stone-ware. 
This paved the way for greater im¬ 
provements by Josiah Wedgewood, 
who was a young son of a Stafford¬ 
shire potter, and born in 1730. This 
extraordinary man overcame all the 
difficulties of his early life by industry 
and perseverance, and applying him¬ 
self to a T-reat variety of improvements 
in pottery, not only succeeded in ac¬ 
quiring a fortune, but became a bene¬ 
factor to his country by carrying the 
art ot pottery to a high degree of per¬ 
fection, and creating a commerce which 


to this day proves a source of national 
wealth. 

But the merit of Wedgewood did 
not consist merely of having the sa¬ 
gacity to perceive that a profitable 
business could be formed by improve¬ 
ment in his art. His mind was of a 
higher class. He gathered around him 
the talent of various countries, and by 
the liberality of his conduct towards 
the persons whom he engaged, en¬ 
couraged them to give him the most 
effective assistance in completing those 
views which his genius imagined, 
but which he never could have ac¬ 
complished alone. He engaged Mr. 
Chisholme, an able chemist, with in¬ 
structions to select the best materials 
for perfecting his various processes. 
He also liberally provided for him in 
his old age. Not satisfied with im¬ 
proving the materials of pottery, he 
was desirous of giving greater value to 
it by improvements in form. The 
ablest modelers were brought from 
Italy, and other countries, who were 
acquainted with the works of the 
ancients. The consequence was that 
English pottery became celebrated 
throughout the world. He encouraged 
the efforts oi genius in others, and in 
lessening, as far as lay in his power, 
the sufferings of his fellow creatures. 
The disposition and manners of 
Wedgewood were such that he became 
the object of admiration and esteem 
for his moral, as for his intellectual 
qualities. He died in the sixty-fifth 
year of his age. In 1763, Wedge¬ 
wood manufactured a kind of ware for 
the table, of a cream color, which 
came into use under the name of 
queens-ware, which was conferred upon 
it in consequence of the patronage of 
her majesty. 

The ware known in general as 
Wedgewood’s is a kind of semi-vitri- 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


303 


fied pottery. Wedge wood’s Egyptian 
ware was used extensively for the tea- 
table, which rivaled in design the 
works of Greek and Roman artists. 
He made what he called the jasper- 
ware, which had elegant bas-reliefs on 
n blue ground. Through the infidelity 
of a servant the secret was disclosed 
nnd sold, so that others executed the 
same art. Among the ornamental 
works may be mentioned two imita¬ 
tions of cameos; one of a slave in 
chains, of which he distributed many 
hundreds to induce the suppression 
of the slave trade; and the other rep¬ 
resenting Hope attended by Peace, 
Art and Labor, made of clay from 
Australia, to show what is produced 
there. Wedgewood’s ware consisted 
in its excellent workmanship, its solid¬ 
ity, standing the action of the fire, its 
fine glaze, etc., etc., which has created 
such a large demand for his class of 
goods all over the world. 


ANCIENT TABLES OF WOOD. 

A very general opinion prevails that 
the rich folk of ancient days were 
rather a poor set of fellows in compar¬ 
ison with our modern nabobs; and 
that they could not afford to buy 
decent chairs and tables for their par¬ 
lors. We are also liable to lift up our 
hands in astonishment at the domestic 
extravagance sometimes displayed at 
the present day, and to consider that 
this is the age superlative of foolish 
expenditures for fancy bits of house¬ 
hold garnishings. We rather think 
that with all the public self-compla¬ 
cency for modern grandeur, the old 
Romans would “ take the shine ” out of 
us, in the table line at any rate. Pliny 
estimates that Cicero once paid about 
$45,000 for a fancy table of citrus 
wood, and that one which had be¬ 


longed to King Juba, on being exposed 
at auction, was knocked down for the 
nice little sum of $54,000. As Cicero 
was a Roman lawyer, we would like to 
know which of his disciples in New 
York could afford to present such a 
comfortable table to his amiable spouse 
at this day. 

Among the Greeks and Romanc 
there existed, for a period of one hun¬ 
dred and fifty years, a ruling passion 
to possess beautiful tables of citrus 
wood, the finer specimens of which 
were compared to gold for their value. 
The veins of this wood run in spirals 
and wavy lines, and these were rich 
and brilliant in their colors, being c. 
mixture of wine-and-honey colored 
veins. Its polish, without any var¬ 
nish, was brilliant as glass. It had a 
fragrant odor, and for this reason it 
was sometimes employed in religious 
sacrifices and for statues of the heathen 
gods. 

A knowledge of the tree from which 
this famous wood was obtained has 
been lost for centuries ; but a corres¬ 
pondent of the London Builder states 
that it is the callitris quadrivalvis, or 
wild-spreading cypress of Mt. Atlas, 
and that the most fancy pieces 
employed in the ancient tables were 
obtained from excrescences or knots, 
something like the elm knots of 
which wooden bowls are frequently 
made in various parts of our country. 
The Roman citrus tables were generally 
of a round shape, supported on ivory 
legs, carved out to represent those of 
animals. 

The principal ornamental woods 
now used in the manufacture of fins 
furniture are mahogany, rosewood and 
black walnut — rosewood being the 
most highly esteemed, not because it 
is finer in the grain than mahogany 
but because it has the greatest contrast 










304 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


of colors, and is not so monotonous to 
the eye. In California there are some 
beautiful colored woods which have 
not yet been introduced into our cabi¬ 
net work; but they no doubt will yet 
find a place in the parlors of our peo¬ 
ple, if it were upon no other considera¬ 
tion than to afford pleasure from their 
variety. A few years ago curly and 
bird's-eye maple were employed exten¬ 
sively for making chairs and other 
articles of furniture, but the demand for 
these woods has almost ceased. Splen¬ 
did logs of these kinds of maple, 
which a few years since would have 
brought a high price, are now burned 
for fuel in various portions of our 
country, there being no demand for 
them for any other purpose. The 
peculiar appearance of these woods is 
now imitated by staining soft timber 
which is so much easier worked that 
cabinet-makers prefer to operate with 
the imitated rather than the genuine 
article. Oak has recently come into 
pretty good repute in chair-making, 
and it is certainly a very beautiful 
wood for this purpose, but not equal to 
American bird's-eye maple. 

The fashion for tables, at present, 
is very different from that which 
reigned in Rome in the days of Cicero ; 
fine marble, not wood, being the pre¬ 
vailing material employed for the tops. 
Our taste may not be so refined as that 
of some others in this respect, but we 
certainly think marble is inferior to 
fine wood in any point of beauty for 
this purpose; it is totally devoid of 
that warmth of color which is so 
pleasing to the eye in rosewood and 
the finer qualities of mahogany. 


To Preserve Eggs. — Put a drop of 
grease of any kind on them, and they 
will keep for a long time. 


SPANISH CEDAR. 


This wood, though it is seldom used 
for veneers, or by furniture makers in 
any form, is generally sold by dealers 
who handle fancy woods. Spanish 
cedar is brought, small quantities at a 
time, direct to Boston as well as New 
York. It is produced largely in Cuba 
and Mexico as well as in Brazil and Gui¬ 
ana. In the country, back of Surinam, 
it is collected by Indian tribes, who stip¬ 
ulate to bring in a certain quantity for 
so much rum delivered in advance, 
and are said to always keep their word.. 
All the cigar boxes made in thi& 
vicinity, and nearly all on the Atlan¬ 
tic seaboard, are manufactured from 
Spanish cedar, and this is the princi¬ 
pal use to which the wood is put. 
Two-thirds of those produced in the 
West are made from poplar and syca¬ 
more. 

Spanish cedar, unlike the more 
costly fancy woods, is sawed during- 
the process of manufacture. Veneer¬ 
ing is now almost entirely cut by 
knives, special machinery having been 
invented for the purpose. The new 
method makes a great saving for man¬ 
ufacturers of veneers. 


OPIUM MANUFACTURE. 

Nearly all of our readers have seen 
the Common or White Poppy, but 
those of us who know it only as a gar¬ 
den plant, can scarcely realize how 
beautiful it appears in the lands where 
it is cultivated for its commercial 
value. 

There it grows to a height of from 
four to six feet, and when in bloom, its 
white flowers floating on the waves of 
polished dark green leaves, give to the 
broad fields the appearance of great 
ponds covered with lilies. 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


305 


The poppy is extensively cultivated 
in Turkey and Persia, and also, though 
to a less extent, in China; some of the 
experiments which have recently been 
made with it in Europe have met with 
good success. But the great opium 
producing districts are in India ; there 
the cultivation of the plant and the 
manufacture of the drug make one of 
the chief industries of the country. 
One of these districts, including the 
great factories of Patna and Ghazee- 
pore, is 600 miles long and 200 miles 
wide, and is entirely given up to the 
business of opium producing. The 
seed, which requires a naturally rich or 
manured soil, is sown in the beginning 
of November; in a short time it ap¬ 
pears above the ground and continues 
growing with great rapidity until Feb¬ 
ruary, when it flowers ; the cultivation 
up to this time consisting in simply 
weeding and thinning, with occasional 
irrigation if the ground is in danger of 
becoming too dry. 

Three or four weeks later the poppy 
head, averages the size of a hen’s egg, 
matures and is ready for the wound¬ 
ing. This is done early in the morn¬ 
ing, or before sunrise, with a small 
knife made of several thin pieces of 
iron fastened together and notched at 
the end like a saw; with this instru¬ 
ment the operator makes a jagged 
cut in the poppy head, from which 
wound a milky fluid exudes during the 
day, thickening at night into a brown¬ 
ish colored gum; the next morning 
this is carefully scraped off and col¬ 
lected in small earthen jars, and from 
these it is transferred to shallow dishes 
resting on slightly inclined boards, so 
that all the watery fluid may run off; 
by this means it gradually hardens 
into thin cakes, which are carefully 
watched and turned that they may 
dry equally. This process usually takes 


a month’s time, after which the cakes 
are packed in jars similar to those in 
which the gum is collected, and sent 
to the factor}^. The weather during 
collecting time is watched with anx¬ 
iety, as the success of the crop depends 
in a great measure upon its character; 
dry weather diminishing the flow of 
the gum and rainy weather injuring 
its quality; mild, moist nights, with 
night dews give the best results. 
When the jars arrive at the factory, 
their contents are carefully weighed 
and tested, and the value accredited 
to the collectors. The opium is then 
cast into huge vats and thoroughly 
kneaded; it is afterwards distributed 
in small quantities to men and boys 
who mould it in small cup-shaped 
vessels into little balls, which are cov¬ 
ered with thin leaves of poppy and 
laid away in the drying room ; when 
perfectly hard and dry, the opium is 
ready to be sent to the market. 


OPIUM-EATING. 

“ Opium is the inspissated juice of 
the poppy — papavers omniferum — 
which is grown chiefly in Asia Minor, 
and is obtained by making incisions in 
the head of the plant. The juice 
flowing from such incisions is collect¬ 
ed in tears, which are formed into 
masses, varying in weight from eight 
ounces to one pound. After the gum 
is thus obtained, it is enveloped in the 
petals of the flower, and shipped as 
other commercial products, yielding an 
immense revenue to that country.” As 
before stated, morphine, laudanum, 
and all other preparations from this 
drug are compounded by chemists and 
apothecaries. The first being an alka¬ 
loid, obtained by the action of chem¬ 
ical agents, as before alluded to, on the 
crude opium, and is a condensation of 







306 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


its narcotic principles, a reduction of 
bulk, uniting its narcotic powers, for 
the convenience of administration in 
cases where it is indicated. Laudanum 
— Tinctura Opii —this is the result 
of the action of alcohol on the drug, 
and possesses in an approximate de¬ 
gree all the properties of the original. 
This liquid preparation is more gen¬ 
erally used than any other ; and as it is 
generally below the standard or regu¬ 
lar formula for strength, is considered 
the least dangerous. leaving before 
stated that in neither opium nor in 
any of its preparations, are there any 
curative principles, and that it is used 
solely for relieving pain, or holding in 
abeyance the excessive action of some 
organ until a remedy can oc applied, 
it will be readily seen tnat it is not a 
proper remedial agent of the pharma¬ 
copoeia, and hence in one sense of the 
word it is not entitled to be ranked as 
a remedial agent in medicines. But 
let medical men consider it a remedy 
if they choose, and use it as such, but 
let them at the same time fully inform 
each patient to whom it is adminis¬ 
tered of the character of the drug, and 
the terrible risks in using it, even in 
a moderate way for the alleviation 
of pain, if continued for any length of 
time. B'or it is only in the moderate 
use of this poison at first that its 
abuses are reached. Like every other 
habit, that of opium-eating is acquired; 
and in most cases it is induced by the 
existence of some disease, or pain 
resulting from wounds or other 
injuries, or surgical operations. The 
patient realizes the fact that the drug 
has the effect of alleviating his or her 
sufferings, and it is continued as often 
as the twinges of pain return. It not 
only relieves the pain, but in the par¬ 
tial suspension of the functions of the 
organs, sleep is induced. When the % 

V 


patient awakes, that dull, monotonous 
feeling, incident to the relaxation of 
the system in recovering from the 
effects of the narcotic poison, is mis¬ 
taken for the original pain, and the 
patient goes to his or her pseudo rem¬ 
edy again. This is continued day by 
day, until at last, step by step, the 
victim reaches a point where the 
horrible truth is at last revealed, 
that he is the abject slave to not 
only a habit but an actual necessity. 
It is found that opium has become 
the vital power of nature, and the 
patient is transformed from a natural, 
reasoning being into an unnatural, 
unreasonable automaton, that can only 
perform its functions when supplied 
with the poisonous stimulant. It 
might be asked in this connection, 
what are its effects on the system? 
The poison penetrates every portion of 
tne system, the muscles, the nerves, 
fibres, cells, capillaries, and in fact 
everything that enters into the organic 
arrangement of the human being,— 
and when its use is continued every 
interstitial is filled with it, until at last 
the miserable victim becomes an opium 
monument, as thoroughly subject to 
its power as the carved statue is to the 
chisel of the sculptor. 

But no one can know the effect of 
this drug so well as those who have 
been victims to its use for years. An 
eminent physician of Maryland says, 
U I have noticed in treating this dis¬ 
ease, that it first stimulates slightly 
the nervous system, circulation and 
respiration, which are under its imme¬ 
diate control; it then acts as a 
sedative to a large extent; it also acts 
on the cerebrum, or seat of the mind, 
in such a manner as to produce sleep. 
Annexed to these main points as 
known by the habitual user of the 
drug, are paralysis of the nerve cen- 






v 

_ the PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 307 


tres, which cause in part the rapid 
increase of the drug necessary to sus¬ 
tain the system, and places the user 
beyond the power to retrace his steps 
back to the beginning, even by the 
shortest manner of diminishing the 
dose, as has been tried by the most 
determined and powerful minds of the 
present age, as well as those of other 
ages. It causes fulness of the head 
which is actual congestion of the 
brain; it diminishes the secretions of 
the intestinal organs, as well as the 
bile and urine, which causes constipa¬ 
tion. In brief it is an insidious, delu¬ 
sive drug, that invites the partaker to 
the exhilarating pleasure of the 
moment, but gives no warning of its 
unhappy and final result. 


YANKEE LOCOMOTIVES IN EGYPT. 

On the railway between Alexandria 
(Egypt) and Suez, recently finished, 
there are four locomotives — two of 
them are of English manufacture and 
the other two were built at Mason’s 
Works, Taunton, Mass. It seems that 
the Pashas ears are open to flattery, 
and the English engineers, through 
their Consul, use every possible means 
to get rid of the American engineers. 
They were told by the railway com¬ 
pany that the engines were not going 
to be used, and that their services 
would not be needed. The excuse for 
giving them up was that they are 
not strong enough to haul the heavy 
trains. One of the Americans, getting 
an opportunity to speak with the 
Pasha, told him he could haul as many 
loaded cars as would reach from one 
end of the road to the other. Accord¬ 
ingly, seventy-five heavy loaded cars 
(which were all they could muster) were 
put in a train, the Pasha’s own car at¬ 
tached, and the whole taken through 


to Suez, a distance of 200 miles, in 
twelve hours, making stoppages for 
fuel and water. The Pasha exclaimed, 
in Egyptian, — u God is great, but a 
Yankee is very near perfection !” On 
his return, he discharged the English 
engine drivers and now uses the Taun¬ 
ton engines altogether. 


PERPETUAL WEATHER TABLE. 

The following weather table, con¬ 
structed by Prof. Herschel, will be 
found wonderfully correct: 

If the moon changes at 12 o’clock, 
noon, the weather immediately after¬ 
ward will be verv rainy, if in summer, 
and there will be no snow or rain, in 
winter. 

If between 3 and 4 o’clock P. M., 
changeable in summer — fair and mild 
in winter. 

Between 4 and 6 o’clock, fair both 
in winter and summer. 

Between 6 and 10 o’clock P. M., in 
summer, fair, if the wind is northwest; 
rainy, if south or southwest. In win¬ 
ter, fair and frosty, if the wind is from 
the south or southwest. 

•Between 10 and 12 o’clock P. M., 
rainy in summer and fair and frosty in 
winter. 

Between 12 at night and 2 o’clock 
A. M., fair in summer and frosty in 
winter — unless the wind is from the 
south or southeast. 

Between 2 and 4 o’clock A. M., cold 
and very showery in summer, and snow 
and storm in winter. 

Between 4 and 6 o’clock A. M., 
rainy both in summer and winter. 

Between 6 and 8 o’clock A. M., 
showery in summer and cold in win¬ 
ter. 

Between 10 and 12 o’clock A. M., 
showery in summer and cold and 
windy in winter. 










308 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


TROPICAL WOODS. 


From Surinam, and other South 
American ports, and from the West 
Indies, there is brought what is called 
in this country leopard wood and in 
England letter or snake wood. It is 
imported direct to Boston. It is a 
beautiful variegated wood, and as each 
piece is very small in diameter, its 
principal use has been found in making 
fancy canes. This business of man¬ 
ufacturing canes and umbrella and 
parasol handles from foreign fancy 
woods has been carried to much greater 
lengths in England than with us. 
Immense quantities of small and 
curious woods are imported to that 
country for that purpose. 

Formerly a good deal of zebra wood 
was brought to this country from Rio 
Janeiro, and used for veneers for mir¬ 
ror frames, backs of brushes, etc., but 
it is now almost out of fashion. A 
wood with a similar striped figure is 
also found in Australia, and the same 
name is given to other woods. Part¬ 
ridge wood, streaked with red, brown 
and black tints, like the wings of that 
bird, is brought from Brazil. Another 
name it bears is pheasant wood. It is 
used occasionally for canes and um¬ 
brella handles. 

Lignum vitas is imported in large 
quantities from Hayti and other West 
India Islands. Its principal uses are 
in the manufacture of shoe-makers 1 
tools, wheels for pulleys, and “dead 
eyes 11 on ships 1 rigging. Boxwood is 
another hard imported wood, which is 
used largely in the manufacture of 
carpenters 1 rules and musical instru¬ 
ments, and is also in great demand for 
wood engravers. There are two varie¬ 
ties, known respectively as Turkish 
and European. The former is brought 
from Smyrna, Constantinople, and va¬ 


rious other ports along the Black Sea, 
and the latter from Lisbon and other 
ports on the Spanish peninsula and 
from Leghorn. 

The English import what they call 
lance wood from Cuba and Jamaica, 
and as it is very pliable employ it in 
the manufacture of such elastic arti¬ 
cles as gig shafts, archery bows and 
springs. It is also used in making sur¬ 
veyors 1 rods and billiard cues. It is 
occasionally seen in this country, where 
it is worked up into fishing rods and 
fancy carriage work. 

From the Brazils are imported tulip- 
wood, of a dark purple color, used in 
making ram-rods, as well as for veneers, 
and king-wood, which is employed in 
small cabinet work. The latter is 
beautifully streaked in violet tints of 
different intensities. It is finer in grain 
than rosewood, which it otherwise 
resembles. Turtle-wood is another 
article that bears a similarity to rose¬ 
wood. Its name sufficiently indicates 
the nature of its figure. It is used for 
turnings. Tulip-wood is very costly, 
being worth, when cut, from ten to 
fifteen cents a foot. This wood is 
found not only in Brazil, but also in 
both the Indies and in Africa. 

A South American wood that is 
imported a little to this country, and 
still more to England, is the cocoa, 
cocus, or cocobola, as it is variously 
termed. It is used in the manufacture 
of cutlery ware, especially for case- 
knife handles. 

Hidden among the dense South 
American forests there doubtless grow 
scores of most beautiful woods, still 
unknown to us, which, if introduced, 
would at once become very popular. 
Scarcely a year passes but new woods 
are .thus brought to the notice of 
veneer manufacturers. 

The island of Santo Domingo is 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATOIN. 


309 


almost the only producer of the beau¬ 
tiful satin-wood, which is becoming 
popular among our manufacturers and 
makers of various kinds of veneers. 
Inlaid wil h other woods it is especially 
in demand for picture frames. The 
tree that produces satin-wood is said to 
resemble our American maple. 


EAST INDIA WOODS. 

Many very beautiful perfumed and 
fancy woods are native to Further 
India and China, where they have 
been long manufactured into various 
household articles, and have always 
been highly valued. Few of these 
have found their way to our markets, 
either in the raw or manufactured 
.state. The teak, a species of oak, 
both black and yellow, is extensively 
used in those regions in the manufac¬ 
ture of every kind of wood work 
requiring a firm, bright, lasting mater¬ 
ial. It is also largely employed for 
ship-building purposes, as it resists to 
a remarkable extent both the action 
of time and the ravages of insects. It 
has of late years been used for this 
purpose in English dockyards. 

Another fragrant wood brought 
from the East, mainly China, is san¬ 
dal-wood. It is used largely in making 
fancy brackets, a business that has 
begun to assume some prominence 
among us. Many other small fancy 
articles are also made from it. In 
Eastern countries this sandal-wood is 
burnt in large quantities at sacrifices. 
American dealers occasionally sell a 
lot for smoking purposes. It is very 
costly, the three varieties — white, 
yellow and red — being about equally 
valuable. The chips and sawdust are 
utilized, sandal-wood oil being dis¬ 
tilled from them. Such gains have 
been realized from the sale of this 


wood, that the tree has become extinct 
in many localities where it formerly 
grew abundantly. The tree is small, 
and attains maturity in about twenty 
years. 

At the foot of the Himalayas are 
grown the toqua and deodora. The 
former when suitably polished makes 
very beautiful cabinet furniture. The 
distinguishing qualities of the latter 
are its fragrance and its almost imper¬ 
ishable nature. Many Hindoo tem¬ 
ples are supported by pillars of this 
wood that were placed in position 
eight hundred years ago. It is by no 
means difficult to work. The wood is 
yellow. Many are of the opinion that 
this deodora tree is identical with the 
Biblical cedar of Lebanon. 

Other Eastern fancy woods, some' of 
which have been introduced into 
Europe in manufactured forms, are the 
hoonsay, which has alternate red and 
black streaks ; the biti, which is open 
grained and slightly resembles rose¬ 
wood ; the nelleck, of a dark flesh 
color; and the novaladdi, a greenish 
brown, close-grained wood which 
takes a good polish. Liverpool, which 
is, as we have said, the world’s market 
for fancy woods, imports many other 
varieties of these beautiful East Indian 
and Australian woods. 


OLIYE TREES. 

In the single county of Nice there 
are 800,000 olive trees, and from this 
one district alone $360,000 worth of 
olive oil, olives and perfumery was 
sent to the United States in 1874. 
There are 300 varieties of French 
olives. Five special sorts are grown 
about Nice. The glossy black berries, 
ground in the mills, furnish the well- 
known oil. Then the kernel, which in 
this process has been crushed, is dried 











310 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


and used universally for fuel, while 
the dead leaves serve the purpose of 
all dead leaves. The wood of the olive 
is highly prized by cabinet-makers for 
their finest articles, especially in mar- 
queterie, admirably executed at Nice 
and Sorrento. Thus the whole tree is 
valuable from root to branch. There 
are thirty varieties of fig trees about 
Nice. 


SULPHUR. 

This article of commerce is at 
present almost entirely received from 
Sicily. Although there are abundant 
deposits of the mineral elsewhere, the 
rate of labor at that point, only 
eight to ten cents per day, creates an 
effective monopoly of the entire traffic 
— the mode of condensing, too, is the 
very crudest and cheapest, being as 
simple as, and very similar too, a 
common charcoal pit. Efforts have 
been repeatedly made to relieve the 
United States from the burden 
imposed on her by the sulphur 
monopoly, especially as she has abund¬ 
ant material within her own borders 
and in the adjacent West Indies; but 
thus far, nothing effective seems to 
have been done. In Texas there are 
large deposits of the mineral, and 
various parties have endeavored to 
utilize them ; but the expensive trans¬ 
portation to the coast, and the depth 
below the surfaces where the material 
occurs, combined with the high price 
of labor, has rendered all operations 
futile. In the West Indies, on the 
islands of St. Vincent, Granada, Nevis, 
Saba and others, there are immense 
bodies of sulphur; but then, again, 
one dollar per day cannot compete 
with ten cents in getting out the raw 
material. Prof. Cleve, of Stockholm, 
who has visited Sicily and other sul¬ 


phur localities, says the supply ex¬ 
tends across the island ; and at various 
depths, where it crops out of the cliff 
full one hundred and seventy-five to 
two hundred feet above the sea-shore T 
it is entirely pure. Prof. Pontiex, of 
Demarara, who also examined the 
island, concurs in the above, which is 
in fact verified by subsequent explora¬ 
tions and developments. Sulphur 
outcrops in crystals all over the face 
of the country, and is always found 
two or three feet below the soil. 


SPRUCE FIR. 

The spruce or Norway fir has many 
varieties. The white fir of Norway is 
the common spruce fir of our woods. 
In Norway there is a distinction made 
betwixt the white and red spruce. The 
former grows on light, poor soil, and 
elevated situations, and has lighter 
foliage and white wood; the latter 
grows in more substantial soils, in the 
valleys, and has a darker, stronger 
foliage and red wood, which is more 
resinous, and of much greater strength 
and durability. Both of these varie¬ 
ties are to be found in our plantations,, 
under the name of common spruce fir. 
The common spruce is indigenous to 
many mountain ranges, both in Europe 
and Asia, where the surface of the soil 
is moist, and the atmosphere cold and 
humid. It is found generally over 
Europe, but most commonly in the 
north of Germany, Denmark, Norway, 
and Sweden, and in Lapland, as far as- 
north latitude 69 degrees. In Asia it 
is found in Siberia, growing on cold 
marshy soils, betwixt the mountains, 
reaching the Arctic Circle, and in some 
instances beyond it. 

The value of the wood of the spruce 
fir is to the beech as 1.079 is to 1.540; 
both as fuel and as charcoal the spruce 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


311 


is superior to the silver fir. The ashes 
furnish potash, and the trunk produces 
immense quantities of resin, from 
which Burgundy pitch is made. The 
bark may be used for tanning, and 
spruce beer is made from the buds and 
young shoots. The chief purposes for 
which the timber of the tree is used 
are scaffold poles, ladders, spars, oars 
and the masts of small vessels; and as 
planks and deals, it is used for flooring, 
for musical instruments, for carving, 
and by cabinet makers for lining fur¬ 
niture. The wood, being fine-grained 
takes a high polish, and does well for 
gilding on, and it will take a black 
stain as well as the wood of the pear 
tree. In carving this wood is easy to 
work, taking the tool very readily; and 
no wood glues better. 

The young trees, especially if the 
bark is kept on, are found to be more 
durable than any other species of pine 
or fir, with the single exception of the 
larch, and for this reason they are 
admirably adapted for fencing, or for 
forming the roofs of agricultural 
buildings, as well as many other pur¬ 
poses connected with rural economy. 
Ponty, in his “Profitable Planter,” 
says that he often found branches of 
this tree that had lain in the woods 
dead for some twenty years perfectly 
sound. Some trees cut down at Blair, 
the property of the Duke of Athol, 
many years ago, were used for spars 
and topmasts, and were found equal in 
quality to those imported from Nor- 
•way. 

Pliny frequently mentions the 
spruce fir, which, he says produced 
tears of resin that could scarcely be 
distinguished from incense. He also 
mentions its use in funeral ceremonies, 
on which occasions a branch was 
placed at the door of the house of the 
deceased. 


ROSEWOOD. 

It has puzzled many people to 
decide why the dark wood so highly 
valued for furniture should be called 
rosewood. Its color certainly does 
not look like a rose, so we must look 
for some other reason. Upon asking, 
we are told that when the tree is first 
cut the fresh wood possesses a very 
strong, rose-like fragrance ; hence the 
name. There are half a dozen or 
more kinds of rosewood trees. The 
varieties are found in South America 
and the East Indies and neighboring 
islands. Sometimes the trees grow so 
large that planks four feet broad and 
ten in length can be cut from one of 
them. These broad planks are princi¬ 
pally used to make the tops of piano¬ 
fortes. When growing in the forest 
the rosewood tree is remarkable for its 
beauty, but such is its value in manu¬ 
facture as an ornamental wood, that 
some of the forests where it once grew 
abundantly now have scarcely a single 
specimen. In Madras, the Govern¬ 
ment has prudently had great planta¬ 
tions of this tree set out, in order to 
keep up the supply. 


THE TRICKS OF THE ALCHEMISTS. 

During the sixteenth and seven¬ 
teenth centuries the practice of al¬ 
chemy was held in the highest repute 
by men of learning, while princes and 
even kings were seized with the pop¬ 
ular delusion. At the same time 
spurious alchemists infested the coun¬ 
try, passing from town to town, and 
by the most specious deceptions im¬ 
posing upon the inhabitants. These 
practitioners with the greatest ease 
procured from their dupes necessary 
funds, which they — as the pioneers in 
the cause of science and on the point 











312 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


of making the grandest discovery that 
had ever enriched the world — required 
to complete their costly experiments. 
The more readily to attain their ends, 
the pretended alchemist would exhibit 
to the gaping multitude, sometimes 
an apparently rusty nail, which he, 
with great gravity and muttering some 
cabalistic words, would plunge into the 
wonderful liquid of transmutation: 
after the lapse of a few moments, the 
nail is shown with its lower portion 
turned into the precious metal. With 
such proof before their eyes, the credu¬ 
lous audience could not withhold the 
small pittance, their insignificant offer¬ 
ing on the shrine of science, which the 
learned operator needed to renew his 
wonderful liquor, and the cunning 
pretender repaints his gilded nail, fills 
again his vial with pure water, and 
passes to the next village. Sometimes 
a lump of lead was exhibited, into 
which a piece of gold had previously 
been introduced. On heating, the 
lead was gradually oxydized, leaving 
the precious metal behind, or a cruci¬ 
ble, concealing beneath a false bottom 
a bead of silver, is exposed to the 
action of heat; some simple powder 
being now thrown in, the vessel is 
cooled, broken, and the silver is dis¬ 
covered. Even such a shallow decep¬ 
tion as washing a coin with quicksilver, 
thus giving it a silvery appearance, 
proved sufficient to deceive the simple 
populace. 

But while these impostors were thus 
successful, the study of alchemy was 
faithfully pursued by such scholars as 
Augurello, Cornelius Agrippa, and the 
unfortunate Bombastes Paracelsus. 
Hitherto the sole aim of these enthu¬ 
siasts had been the transmutation of 
the base into the precious metals; but 
about this time a new object to be 
attained presented itself. The success 


which had attended the use of mer¬ 
cury, antimony, and several chemical 
preparations in the treatment of cer¬ 
tain diseases, awakened the hope that 
by diligent study the discovery would be 
made of some universal medicine which 
should heal all disorders, and prolong 
human life indefinitely. This new 
field was occupied by new zealots, and 
one of these was Paracelsus, who, main¬ 
taining that strong distilled alcohol 
was the desired elixir vitae, fell a sacri¬ 
fice to his enthusiasm by drinking too 
freely of this preventive of old age. 

The decline of alchemy may be 
dated from the middle of the sixteenth 
century. Few writers of reputation 
after that time wrote professedly on 
this subject, though a kind of half 
belief in its truth was long after cher¬ 
ished by even the most eminent chem¬ 
ists, and occasionally individuals 
appeared boldly claiming success *n the 
science: such men were Agricola, 
Denis Zachaire, Dr. Dee and his co¬ 
laborer, Edward Kelley,, and, as the 
last of the alchemists, Helvetius, Jean 
Delisle, the Count de St. Gfermain and 
Cagliostro. Even so late as the year 
1784, Dr. Price, F. R. S. publicly pro¬ 
claimed his ability of creating gold at 
will, but an investigation into his 
process being determined upon by the 
Royal Society, finding detection inevit¬ 
able, the would-be alchemist finished 
his course by committing suicide. 

The poverty of the alchemists as a 
class became proverbial, thus though 
avowedly in possession of the art 
of making gold, they were at any time 
willing to divulge this secret merely 
for a small amount of what they pre¬ 
tended to produce in any quantity. 
Although it cannot be claimed that 
the researches of these philosophers 
were in the domains of true science, 
yet in their fruitless efforts for obtain- 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


313 


ing the philosopher’s stone, or the 
elixir of life, the world acquired infor¬ 
mation of far more value than the 
possession of either would have con¬ 
ferred upon it, in the advancement 
made in the rudiments of what has 
since their day developed into the 
science of chemistry. 


CHAMOIS. 


The chamois of commerce is a vari¬ 
ety of soft pliable leather obtained by 
tanning the skin of the animal of the 
same name belonging to the antelope 
species. The leather is used exten¬ 
sively for burnishing metals, jewelry, 
glass, precious stones, silverware, fine 
woods, etc., and also in some cases for 
linings, and as a filling in or pack for 
surgical instruments. A great deal of 
the leather sold in the shops is noth¬ 
ing but finely tanned sheepskin ; but 
this is not nearly so soft or strong as 
the genuine article, although it is 
held at the extreme prices asked for 
the imported and real chamois leather. 
The animal known as the chamois 
chiefly inhabits the Alps and Pyre¬ 
nees mountains in Europe, being 
found in flocks of from half a dozen 
up to a hundred in number. It is of 
an exceedingly wild nature, and has 
never been domesticated. Its size is 
about that of the domestic goat, of a 
dusky yellow brown color, with the 
cheeks, throat and belly of a yellowish 
white. It is very agile in its move¬ 
ments, and when being pursued 
bounds over the ground with great 
rapidity. The horns are black, slen¬ 
der, upright, hooked backward at their 
tips, and about eight inches in height, 
and are very graceful, both in 
proportion and appearance. At 
the base of each there is a 
good sized orifice in the skin, 


of which the use is unknown. 
Like all animals of the antelope spe¬ 
cies, the chamois has sparkling and 
beautiful eyes. It feeds only on the 
sweetest and finest herbage of the 
mountains, and its flesh is of a very 
delicate flavor, and is highly prized. 

When alarmed, the chamois hisses 
with such force as to be heard at a 
great distance, more particularly so as 
the abrupt walls of rock re-echo the 
note which is heard from every angle 
of the surrounding declivities. Paus¬ 
ing a moment the animal looks about 
him to see if he is pursued ; and find¬ 
ing its apprehensions well founded, he 
repeats the hisses, and strikes the 
ground with his forefeet with great 
violence. In this way an entire flock 
is frequently alarmed, and seek to pro¬ 
vide for their safety by a precipitate 
flight, bounding from rock to rock, 
and evincing the utmost agitation 
until they are far from the reach of 
danger. The hissing of the male is 
much louder than that of the female; 
it is performed through the nose, and 
is, strictly speaking, the force of a 
strong breath, driven violently through 
a small aperture. Chamois hunting is 
a very perilous occupation, pursued as 
it is among the defiles and chasms 
of the mountains; but yet, there 
are many persons who pursue it, 
both for the profit and excitement 
it affords them. The hunter must 
be sure footed, brave, and fertile 
in resources, as he frequently 
encounters great dangers that may 
end in the loss of his life. 

Heat is very disagreeable to the 
chamois, and they are very seldom 
seen in summer, except in excavations 
in the rocks, surrounded by fragments 
of unmelted ice, or under the shade of 
overhanging precipices which face the 
North and effectually keep off the rays 












314 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


of the sun. They drink but spar¬ 
ingly, and chew the cud in the inter¬ 
vals of feeding. When in rapid flight 
from any cause they make the most 
wonderful leaps, and frequently throw 
themselves across a chasm and down 
a perpendicular wall of rock twenty 
or more feet in height. Thousands of 
these animals are killed annually both 
for the sake of their flesh and their 
skins; but such is the demand for 
the leather in civilized countries that 
immense quantities of interior goods 
are sold to consumers. 


THL OLD REL CEN'i'c 

As the old “red cent” hat now 
passed out of use, and, except rarely, 
out of sight, like “ the old oaken 
bucket,” its history is a matter of suf¬ 
ficient interest for preservation. The 
cent was first proposed by Robert 
Morris, the great financier of the Rev¬ 
olution, and was named by Jefferson 
two years after. It began to make 
its appearance from the mint in 1792. 
It bore the head of Washington on 
one side, and thirteen links on the 
other. The French Revolution soon 
created a rage for French ideas in 
America, which put on the cent, in¬ 
stead of the head of Washington, the 
head of the Goddess of Liberty — a 
French Liberty, with a neck thrust 
forward and flowing locks. The chain 
on the reverse side was displaced 6y 
the olive wreath of peace, but the 
French Liberty was short-lived, and so 
was her portrait on our cent. The 
next head or figure that succeeded this 
— the staid, classic dame with a fillet 
around her hair — came into fashion 
thirty or forty years ago, and her 
finely chiseled Grecian features have 
been but slightly altered by the lapse 
ot time. 


MANUFACTURE OF LOCKS. 


There is much that is curious and 
interesting in the history of lock¬ 
making which dates back to a far more 
remote period of history than is gen¬ 
erally supposed. The labors of the 
antiquary disclose the fact that some 
of our most modern improvements in 
the construction of locks are merely 
the accidental reproduction of inven¬ 
tions that originated many centuries 
ago. The ancient Egyptians, those 
silent custodians of more than one of 
the “lost arts,” undoubtedly manu¬ 
factured locks with tumblers which 
held the bolt until they were moved 
by the key, a device usually considered 
to be of modern origin. Amid the 
ruins of Thebes, and in other locali¬ 
ties, iron keys have oeen found, evi¬ 
dently designed for locks of this 
description. 

That the Romans also made locks 
of intricate construction is evident 
from the numerous discoveries in 
Herculaneum and Pompeii, and in 
England there have been found keys 
which were doubtless contemporary 
with the Roman occupation of Great 
Britain. Ages ago the Chinese made 
wooden locks which operated upon 
precisely the same principle as the 
famous Bramah lock which was in¬ 
vented in England in 1784, and was 
regarded as the first great improve¬ 
ment in lock-making. 

In the Bramah lock, so named from 
its inventor, the use of wards was dis¬ 
pensed with, and other peculiarities 
of construction gave it the reputation 
of being a lock that could not possibty 
be picked. For many years a lock of 
this kind was displayed in the window 
of the office in London, with a reward 
of two hundred pounds to any one 
who could pick it. This feat was 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


315 


accomplished in 1851, by Mr. Hobbs, 
whose first attempt occupied nineteen 
hours, owing to the breaking of one 
of his instruments, but he subse¬ 
quently repeated the operation three 
times within an hour. 

The next lock of any prominence 
was Cliubbs 1 , invented in England in 
1818. This was also easily picked by 
Mr. Hobbs. At the London exposi¬ 
tion of 1851, Mr. Hobbs presented for 
the attention of mechanical experts a 
lock made by Mr. Pyes, which defied 
the ingenuity of the best English 
locksmiths, but was finally picked by 
the late Mr. Linus Yale, Jr., who was 
for many years the president of the Yale 
Lock Manufacturing Co., of Stamford, 
Conn. This triumph of American 
skill was frankly recognized by Mr. E. 
B. Denison, the celebrated lock maker 
of London, who says that American 
locks u are vastly superior to any we 
have ever seen made in England ; and, 
on the whole, the United States are 
evidently ahead of us in the manu¬ 
facture of both good and cheap locks.” 

Within a few years past the hard¬ 
ware business, in all its innumerable 
departments has become an interest of 
immense, importance in this country, 
and among the countless articles 
embraced under the generic term 
hardware, locks may be regarded as 
one of the most prominent. There are 
of course numerous claimants for dis¬ 
tinction in this branch of production, 
but for ingenuity of design, excellence 
of material, finished workmanship, and 
above all, absolute security, none sus¬ 
tain a higher reputation than the cele¬ 
brated Yale locks above alluded to. 

As first manufactured nearly thirty 
years ago by their inventor, the late 
Mr. Linus Yale, senior, these locks 
were a decided improvement over their 
predecessors, but their range of appli¬ 


cation was limited, and their costli¬ 
ness prevented very general adoption. 
Some years subsequently, Mr. Linus 
Yale, Jr., invented a lock of different 
and superior construction, having a 
flat, folding key, but his attention 
being soon directed toward bank locks, 
regarding which great interest was 
then felt, he for several years con¬ 
fined his labors to their improvement, 
patenting numerous inventions of 
great value. 

In 1860, Mr. Yale resumed the pro¬ 
duction of key locks for general use, 
and soon afterwards patented a style 
of lock which, with subsequent 
improvements, has since rendered his 
name so celebrated. It was one of 
the description called a “pin lock,” 
identical in some respects with that 
previously made by his father, but 
possessing the distinctive feature of a 

key of thin, flat steel, less than an 
inch and a half long, and weighing 
but a fraction of an ounce. 

The width of the key admits of ten 
different “ bittings,” or depths of 
notches, therefore a lock with but one 
pin could be variously “ set up,” so as 
to be opened by ten different keys. 
In a lock with two pins, the number 
of changes, or varieties of keys, will 
be 100 ; three pins, 1,000 ; four pins, 
10,000; five pins, 100,000; six pins, 
1,000,000 ; seven pins, 10,000,000. The 
least number of pins contained in 
any of the Yale locks is four, as in 
drawer and desk locks; the night 
latches have fivethe post-office, 
heavy store door locks, etc., six; and 
the “safe deposit” locks, — for inside 
doors of safes, vaults, etc.,— have 
seven pins. 

9 

Paper of cotton rags invented 
towards the close of the tenth century. 
Paper made of linen in 1300. 







316 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


JAMES WATT. 


Men differ from one another in 
greatness as the stars do in glory. 
Some are brilliant as solar orbs, and 
emit a splendor of their own ; others 
like planets, which exhibit a beauti¬ 
ful but borrowed light; while others, 
again, twinkle only as feeble asteroids, 
almost defying the powers of the tele¬ 
scope to recognize. Among the great 
shining lights that have reflected a 
power of their own upon this earth, 
James Watt, the great inventor of 
the steam engine, occupies the elevated 
position in practical mechanics which 
Sir Isaac Newton does in natural phi¬ 
losophy. In the accomplishment of 
great results, affecting all classes of 
society in multiplying the productive 
powers of industry and art, he stands 
high above all other men, as Saul stood 
above the tribes of Israel. This great 
inventor and mechanician was born in 
January, 1736, in Greenock, a seaport 
town in the west of Scotland, and, be¬ 
ing of a delicate constitution, he re¬ 
ceived most of his youthful tuition 
from his father and mother at their 
fireside. An early display of talent 
for mathematics and mechanics was 
cultivated with assiduity, and, when 
quite young, he constructed various 
ingenious machines and instruments. 
During a single year s instruction in 
the city of London, as a philosophical 
instrument-maker, he became as skill¬ 
ful a workman as several journeymen 
in the same shop who had been engaged 
at the business for ten years. After 
this, he came to the city of Glasgow, 
was furnished with a shop within the 
college walls, and received the title of 
mathematical instrument-maker to the 
University. Here his talents were 
early appreciated by the professors 
and students, especially by Dr. Black. 


the father of modern chemistry. It 
was while repairing a model of New- 
commen’s atmospheric engine (which 
was used in lecturing by one of the 
professors), that he invented the u sep¬ 
arate condenser 11 to the engine, and 
thus changed its whole character, and 
quadrupled its powers. Of all the in¬ 
ventions which the ingenuity of man 
has devised, it is the most wonderful 
and useful. It greatly resembles the 
human body in its mode of operation. 
The cylinder, like a great heart, re¬ 
ceives the steam by throbbing valves, 
and it becomes animate with power 
and motion, — forging a needle, spin¬ 
ning a silken cord, weaving a carpet, 
knitting a stocking, propelling the 
majestic steamer across the ocean, and 
the rolling car over the iron-bound 
course through forest, field and prai¬ 
rie. So practical and synthetical was 
the genius of Watt, that he constructed 
the steam engine, and left it very near¬ 
ly as perfect as we now have it, except 
in its adaptability and application to 
railroads. It is not possible for us to 
estimate the value of the benefits 
which his inventions have conferred 
upon mankind; we can do but little 
more in our brief space than acknowl¬ 
edge their importance. 

The old atmospheric engine, as Watt 
found it, was single-acting. Steam 
was admitted under the piston into 
the cylinder, then cut off, and a jet 
of water then condensed it, when 
the piston descended; then the water 
was let out, steam again admitted, 
and so on continuously, wasting an 
immense amount of time and heat. 

The manner in which his invention 
originated was peculiar. The model 
of the atmospheric engine which he 
was employed to repair having greatly 
excited his mind, he examined it thor¬ 
oughly, and soon comprehended its 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


317 


entire principle of action. He became 
satisfied tliat it was radically defective 
in some points; that it wasted an im¬ 
mense quantity of heat, and could not 
be made to operate rapidly by any 
arrangement whatever, owing to the 
successive heating and cooling opera¬ 
tions in the cylinder at every stroke. 
Occupied with such thoughts, he took 
a walk out into the green fields, and 
during his meditations, the idea of 
condensing the dteam in a separate 
vacuum vessel flashed across his imag¬ 
ination like a gleam of lightning. 
Almost as soon as the thought entered 
his mind, he mentally arranged me¬ 
chanical devices to test it, and by next 
day at noon he had a rude model con¬ 
structed, and proved the value and 
correctness of his grand conception. 
After securing a patent, he found it 
very difficult to get a person of suffi¬ 
cient wealth and enterprise to engage 
in building large engines. This, how¬ 
ever, he at last fortunately secured in 
Mr. Bolton, a wealthy Birmingham 
manufacturer. The first engines they 
built were for pumping the deep mines 
of Cornwall, and they were sold under 
the most favorable and honorable con¬ 
ditions ; the tax asked for their use 
being one-third of the price of the 
fuel they saved annually. After their 
value and usefulness had* been estab¬ 
lished, there were several parties who 
were mean enough (even when making 
fortunes by their use) to try to cheat 
him out of his rights, just as there are 
parties who try to cheat inventors at 
the present day. On this account he 
was involved in several lawsuits, and 
on one occasion had to pay $30,000 for 
London lawyers 1 fees alone. This he 
considered a great extortion, but he 
bore it with considerable fortitude. 

The last days of this great inventor 
were scent in comparative wealth and 


tranquility of mind. Long after he 
retired from business, he kept on in¬ 
venting for his own amusement; and 
he used his tools, bench, workshop 
and leather apron to the very last 
month of his life. At 81 years of 
age, he invented a machine for copying 
busts, and his first production in this 
line he presented to a friend, remark¬ 
ing, with his usual quiet humor, “ b} r 
a young engraver in his eighty-second 
year.” He was also the inventor of 
the copying-press, an invention now 
universally used. He could construct 
a telescope, a parallel ruler, an organ, 
a violin, a clock, a bridge, and a steam 
engine with equal facility. He was 
undoubtedly the greatest mechanic 
that ever lived, and his knowledge on 
all subjects was wonderful. He could 
speak and write French, German and 
Italian ; he understood music, chemis¬ 
try, anatomy and geometry ; in short, 
he was a prodigy; yet he was a most 
modest, honest and kind-hearted man. 
He was offered a baronetcy by the 
king, but he refused the honor — it 
could not add to his fame or charac¬ 
ter. He did more for the world than 
all the generals and statesmen that 
ever lived ; and although several mon¬ 
uments have been erected to his mem¬ 
ory since his death, which occurred 
on the 18th of August, 1819, yet he 
needed them not. Wherever we see a 
steam engine, there is a monument to 
Jambs Watt.— Scientific American. 


FIRST USE OF ILLUMINATING GAS 
IN AMERICA. 


It is claimed that gas was first used 
for lighting buildings in Rhode Island. 
On the 13th of November, 1813, David 
Melville, of Newport, and Winslow 
Lewis, of Boston, announced that they 
had become proprietors of a patent 









318 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


issued by the President of the United 
States, of an improved gas lamp for 
lighting manufactories, mills, mines, 
theatres, etc., with hydrogen gas or 
inflammable air, produced from pit 
coal. The proprietors asserted that 
the new light was safer, more agree¬ 
able, and less expensive than any 
other, and that there was no danger 
from sparks or the use of snuffers, as 
was the case in the use of oil lamps 
and candles. Insurance rates would 
thus be lowered, and a great saving 
would be secured to the manufacturer 
who used the new gas light. Persons 
were referred to a building in New¬ 
port, R. I., in which the new system 
was in successful operation, and also 
the cotton manufactory belonging to 
Seth Bemis, at Watertown, Mass. 
They further stated that the patentee 
had just (November 13, 1813) placed 
the new system in the Wenscutt fac¬ 
tory, one and a quarter miles from 
Mill Bridge, which mill was brilliantly 
illuminated ever} r evening. Gentlemen 
interested in cotton mills were urged 
to visit these places and inspect the 
new invention. The proprietors of¬ 
fered to furnish the necessary apparatus 
for any number of burners at ten days 1 
notice. 

The Arkwright mill, then princi¬ 
pally owned by Mr. James De Wolf, 
was also lighted by gas under this 
patent. The works were erected under 
the superintendence of Mr. Melville. 
This, however, must have been subse¬ 
quent to the Wenscutt works, since, 
had the works at Arkwright been in 
operation at the date of Mr. Melville’s 
advertisement, he would undoubtedly 
have referred to that mill instead of 
Mr. Bemis’, at Watertown, and the 
building at Newport; unless, indeed, 
the fatal accident which happened at 
Arkwright induced Mr. Mellvile to 


suppress the fact. The story of the 
accident seems to be as follows: Mr. 
Abraham Churchill, employed in the 
capacity of watchman, saw what he 
thought to be a light moving about 
the mill about ten o’clock in the 
evening; he, therefore, took an old- 
fashioned tin lantern, punched with 
holes, and containing a tallow candle, 
and with this proceeded to examine 
the mill. He found nothing wrong 
about the mill, and went to the build¬ 
ing adjoining, which contained the 
gasometer. Entering this building, he 
removed the candle from the lantern, 
and, holding the flame to the mouth 
of a large stop-cock, turned on the 
gas. The flames were instantly drawn 
within the gasometer, which exploded, 
destroying the building, and so injuring 
Mr. Churchill that he died the follow¬ 
ing morning. He was undoubtedly 
led to this act by seeing Mr. Melville 
perform a similar experiment. Mr. 
Melville had constructed a tube on 
the top of the gasometer, from which, 
on removing a plug, a jet of gas would 
escape. This jet he would light, thus 
throwing up a flame two or more feet 
high, to the delectation of spectators. 
But Mr. Melville was always careful 
to see sufficient pressure applied before 
ignition. This lack of pressure was 
probably fatal to Mr. Churchill. 

The gasometer was never rebuilt at 
Arkwright, and one can readily con¬ 
ceive the effect of such an accident on 
the new enterprise. In England gas 
was used in partially lighting a mill 
as early as 1798, and a mill at Bolton, 
England, was fully lighted in 1805. 
The London Gaslight Company soon 
followed, in 1810. So that it is prob¬ 
able that Mr. Melville’s process came 
from England, and, with the collapse 
at Arkwright, went out in Rhode 
Island for many years. —Iron Age . 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


319 


ORIGIN OF STREET LAMPS. 

Street lamps are of comparatively 
recent origin, for the practice, now so 
prevalent, of lighting the streets of 
large cities, can hardly be said to have 
existed at all previous to the middle of 
the sixteenth century, at which time 
the inhabitants of Paris were ordered 
to keep lights burning before their 
houses during the night, as the city 
was then much infested with street 
robbers. There is no evidence that 
Rome made any provision for illumi¬ 
nating its streets. Flambeaux and the 
lantern were the Roman’s only guid¬ 
ing-stars on his way home from a 
carousal or a nocturnal visit. At Ant¬ 
werp, however, as early as the fourth 
century, some of the principal streets 
had lamps suspended from the baths 
and public buildings; and on occasions 
of sorrow these lamps were left un¬ 
lighted. Paris was first generally 
lighted in 1558, when the municipal 
authorities caused fallots to be erected 
at the corners of the streets. These 
fallots were vases filled with wood, 
pitch, rosin, and other combustible ma¬ 
terial. They were in a short time su¬ 
perceded by lanterns, which were few 
in number and very unsatisfactory in 
their service. In 1662, an Italian 
named Landati, entered into a curious 
speculation. He obtained the exclu¬ 
sive privilege of erecting booths or 
posts, where anybody might hire a link 
or lantern, which he might carry—or, 
by paying an extra sum, have a person 
to carry it for him. A regulated hour¬ 
glass was carried with each lantern. 
A few years later the stationary lan¬ 
tern was improved in form and ex¬ 
tended in use. About the middle of 
the last century, the lieutenant of 
police offered a premium for the best 
street lamp; and the “reverberating 
lamp,” as it was called, was the result. 


It was suspended from a string stretch¬ 
ed across the street, and had sufficient 
height for vehicles to pass under. 

The inhabitants of London were or¬ 
dered to hang out lanterns before their 
houses in 1668; and in 1690 the order 
was such that every housekeeper had to 
hang out a lamp or light every night 
as soon as it was dark, between Michael¬ 
mas and Lady Hay, and these lights 
should be kept burning until midnight. 
The Common Council, in 1716, ordered 
that every housekeeper, whose house 
is fronted on the street, should, on 
every dark night hang out one or more 
lights, with sufficient cotton wicks to 
burn from six to eleven o’clock under 
penalty of one shilling. A few public 
lamps were set up by the corporation 
about this time, and housekeepers who 
had no light had to pay a small rate. 
In 1736 an act was passed for setting 
up a sufficient number of street lamps 
of glass, to be kept burning from sun¬ 
set to sunrise the year round. Amster¬ 
dam was lighted previous to this time, 
and so was Copenhagen. The Hague, 
Venice, Messina, Palermo, Hamburg, 
Madrid, and other places, adopted the 
custom at various periods during the 
seventeenth century. At Rome the 
streets were not lighted as late as the 
latter part of the last century. At 
Berlin the owners of every third house 
at first hung out lights, and took turns 
at it. In 1792 Mr, Murdoch, of Red¬ 
ruth, obtained inflammable gas from 
various substances, and in 1797 he 
lighted the Soho manufactories with 
gas procured fi a coal. In a short 
time the theatres, tne large factories, 
and then the better class of shops, 
were lighted with the gas. Gas-works 
were established, pipes were laid in the 
streets, and finally the old street lamps 
gave way to the more brilliant and less 
troublesome gaslights. 








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AUTOMATON MECHANICAL WONDERS. 


Automaton figures, or Androides, 
made to imitate Human actions, are of 
early invention. Archytas, of Tar- 
entum, a renowned mathematician and 
mechanic, who redeemed Plato, when 
sold as a slave by Dionysius, the 
younger, about 400 years B. C., made 
a flying dove, which is mentioned by 
several classic authors. But the ear¬ 
liest automata are the tripods, moved 
on living wheels and instinct with life, 
which Homer describes Vulcan as 
having made. Next are the curious 
creations of Daedalus — walking and 
even dancing statues, and a wooden 
cow which moved and gave milk. 

In later times, Friar Bacon is said 
to have made a brazen head which 
spoke. This was made A. D., 1264. 
Alpertus Magnus spent thirty years 
in making another. A coach and two 
horses, a page, and a lady inside, were 
made by Camus, for Louis XIV. when 
a child. The horses and figures moved 
naturally, variously, and perfectly. 
They were made in 1649. 

Vaucanson made an artificial duck, 
which performed every function of a 
real one, even an imperfect digestion— 
eating, drinking and quacking. A^au- 
canson also made a flute player in 
1738. He undertook to make a 
machine, or automaton, to display all 
the mechanism of the circulation of 
the blood, the veins and arteries of 
which were to be of gum elastic; but 
in his day the art of rendering India 
rubber plastic was unknown, so the 
scheme fell through. 

In the fifteenth century, a German 
named John Muller Rigio Montanus 
made an eagle and a fty of iron. The 
eagle is said to have flown from the 
city of Konigsburg, saluted the Em¬ 
peror, who was marking his entrance, 


and returned to his maker. The fly, it 
is recorded, would soar about the 
room, with a buzzing sound, and, after 
a minute or two, alight upon his 
maker’s hand. 

In the middle of the last century,, 
two philosophical mechanics, named 
Droz (father and son), made some 
wonderful automatons in Paris. The 
father made the figure of a child 
seated at a desk, which dipped its pen 
in the ink and wrote in French from 
dictation. The son made a female 
piano-forte player, which sat down ta 
the harpsichord, played several tunes,, 
followed with her eyes and head the 
notes on the music-book, and at the 
close rose and saluted the audience. 

A number of years after this, Mail- 
lardet exhibited a female figure which, 
sea‘ed at the piano, played for an hour, 
moving the fingers and eyes naturally, 
and imitating breathing by a gentle 
heaving of the breast. With this he 
exhibited a humming-bird coming out 
of a box, perching on a bough, moving 
wings, breast and eyes, and opening 
its beak as if to emit song, its little 
throat moving all the time. At the 
same time he exhibited the figure of 
a boy kneeling on one knee, and hold¬ 
ing a pen in his hand, with which he 
wrote and made various drawings. He 
had also made a mechanical tumbler — 
a little image about two inches high, 
inclosed in a glass case, the lower part 
of which contained the mechanism.. 
When this tigure was set in motion it 
threw itself into a variety of elegant 
and grotesque attitudes, dancing to 
music produced by the machine. 

In 1809, M. Maetzel, a fine mechanic, 
made a trumpeter for the Emperor of 
Austria, which was exhibited at Vi¬ 
enna, and played the Austrian and 
French cavalry marches with great 
skill. But M. Vaucanson’s flageolet- 








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player, constructed in 1741, was won¬ 
derful. It produced music from a 
flageolet held in one hand, while the 
other shook a tambourine. 

In 1269, Roger Bacon, one of the 
finest scholars of his age, suggested 
the reformation of the calendar, in¬ 
vented the magnifying glass, and is 
believed to have discovered that char¬ 
coal, sulphur and saltpetre, mixed in 
certain proportions, would produce 
. thunder and lightning. He also made 
a brazen head which spoke, but it was 
accidentally destroyed by some igno¬ 
rant or superstitious person, who was 
alarmed when, in a deep voice, it 
uttered the Roman oracular words, 
u Time is; Time was; Time will be. 17 

One of the most remarkable pieces 
of mechanism ever made, was known 
as the “ Automaton Chess Player.” It 
was made by Wolfgang de Kempelen, 
a Hungarian, who, seeing some curious 
magnetical performances exhibited at 
Vienna, in 1769, told the Empress 
Maria Theresa that he thought he 
could contrive something which would 
throw these apparent wonders into the 
shade. She was excited by this boast, 
and desired him to try it. In six 
months he produced the “ Automaton 
Chess Player.” 

For many years Kempelen refused 
to exhibit it in public, though he fre¬ 
quently showed it in the Empress 1 
private rooms in Vienna. He also 
declined many offers to purchase it, 
and at last took it to pieces. 

The Grand Duke of Russia having 
visited Vienna, he w^as requested to 
show the figure to him. It excited so 
much wonder that he was again urged 
to make money by exhibiting it in 
public. He consented, and showed it 
in nearly every great city of Europe. 
On his death, in 1819, the automaton 
was sold, after which it was taken to 


the United States, where it has been 
seen by thousands. 

The so-called automaton resembled a 
Turk, full-sized, dressed in Oriental 
costume, and seated behind a box 
resembling a chest of drawers. Before 
proceeding to action, the exhibiter 
opened several doors in the chest, 
which revealed a large army of wheels, 
pulleys, cylinders, springs, etc. The 
chessmen were taken from a large 
drawer, and a cushion was placed on 
the table for the Turk to rest his right 
arm upon ; the left hand, somewhat 
raised, held a pipe. When the doors 
were opened, a lighted candle was 
placed within the cavities thus dis¬ 
played. This removed, and the doors 
closed, the exhibiter wound up the 
works, placed the cushion under the 
right arm of the figure, and challenged 
any one to play. 

The Turk always played with the 
white men, and made the first move. 
The hand and fingers opened on 
touching the piece, which it firmly 
grasped and placed on the proper 
square. Then the living antagonist 
moved his piece ; after which, pausing 
for a few moments, as if to study the 
game, the Turk moved another piece. 
On giving check to the king, the 
figure shook its head. Sometimes, to 
try it, the human player made a false 
move. The figure never allowed this 
to pass unnoticed, but tapped on the 
chest or box in an apparently impa¬ 
tient manner, replaced the piece, and 
punished the adversary by taking the 
move for itself. If the human player 
was too long considering his moves, 
the automaton tapped smartly on the 
chest with the right hand, as if to 
desire him to u hurry up.” All 
through the game the whizzing sound 
of machinery in motion was audible. 

While Mr. Kempelen retained the 






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automaton, the figure invariably won 
the game. After it had passed, on his 
death, into the possession of M. 
Maetzel, it was frequently defeated, 
though its play was always good. 

When the game was ended, the 
Turk moved the knight, with its 
proper zigzag motion, from the square 
it occupied, over the other sixty-three 
squares of the board, in turn, without 
missing a single square, or touching 
any square a second time. 

It was long doubted whether this 
really was a mere automaton. It was 
observed that, in winding up the clock 
work, the key never went beyond a 
certain number of revolutions, whether 
the game was long or short. Sixty- 
three moves had been made without 
winding up, and once, in a moment of 
forgetfulness, the figure played with¬ 
out any winding up after the last 
game. 

The original story as to the history 
of this machine was, that it had been 
constructed to permit a Siberian exile 
to escape from Russia, by being con¬ 
cealed within, and that, being a dwarf, 
this was easily done. But it was made 
in Vienna, and when the mystery was 
disclosed, it appeared that there really 
was room, notwithstanding the appar¬ 
ent show of wheels and machinery, for 
a man to sit in, with a chess-board 
before him, on which, by mechanical 
arrangement, each move made by the 
figure was instantly repeated, each 
return move made below being equally 
repeated on the squares above. Of 
course the concealed player was always 
an expert. 

Sir David Brewster, inventor of the 
stereoscope, wrote an article upon the 
automaton chess-player, in which he 
proved, by measurement and diagrams, 
that a man must be concealed within 
the box, to make the play of the 


Turkish figure. After he had made this 
disclosure, it was confessed that his 
philosophical and practical conjecture 
had been true. 


THE INVENTOR OF THE CIRCULAR 

SAW. 


In a lonely, secluded position in the 
northwest corner of the cemetery near 
the village of Richmond, Kalamazoo 
county, Michigan, the historian can 
find, on a pure white marble slab, 
nearly concealed from view by a large 
cluster of liia ; bushes, engraved the 
simple name of Benjamin Cummins, 
born A. D., 1772, died A. D., 1848. n 
And who was Benjamin Cummins ? 
He was the inventor of circular saws, 
now in use in this country and in 
Europe. Nearly sixty years ago, at 
Burtonville, N. i r ., near Amsterdam, 
this man hammered out, at his own 
blacksmith’s anvil, the first circular 
saw known to mankind. He was a 
noted pioneer in Michigan, a first 
cousin to one of the Presidents of the 
United States, a slave-ownei in New 
York State, a leading Mason in the 
days of Morgan, and at whose table 
the very elite of the then great State 
of New York feasted and drank freely 
of his choice liquors and wines. A 
vessel-owner on the North river before 
the days of steamboats, a captain 
in the war of 1812, where, after 
having three horses shot under him, 
with one stroke of his sword he 
brought his superior officer to the 
ground for an insult and because he 
was a traitor and a coward, and after 
having been court-martialed, instead 
of having been shot, he was appointed 
a colonel in his place. And in this 
lowly grave are the ashes of the man 
who, nearly seventy years ago, at 
Albany, N. Y., took up and moved 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


323 


bodily a large block of brick buildings, 
and, to the wonder and astonishment 
of the world, constructed a mile and 
a half of the Erie canal through a 
bed of rock, and who also built, per 
contract, those first low bridges over 
the same. He also aided in the con¬ 
struction of the first ten miles of rail¬ 
road built in the United States, and 
founded both the villages of Esperence 
and Burtonville, on the old Schoharie, 
near Amsterdam. The study and aim 
of this man’s life appeared to be to 
accomplish that which none others 
could accomplish, and when the object 
sought was secured, or overcome, he 
passed it as quietly by as he would the 
pebbles on the sea-shore. 


A HISTORY OF GLASS. 

Another remarkable proof of the 
high antiquity of the art of glass 
making, and of the early perfections 
of which it boasts, is exhibited in a 
large plate of glass which was found 
at Herculaneum, an ancient city in 
Italy, which was destroyed by an 
eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79. 
From Syria, where, as already men¬ 
tioned, the manufacture of glass was 
first established on an extensive scale, 
or something like system, it gradually 
traveled west. The Greeks acquired 
it, and from thence it found its way 
to Rome; but its march was slow, 
and for many centuries the Romans 
were supplied from Alexandria. The 
shape in which it was imported, how¬ 
ever, still bespoke a limited knowledge 
of its use. The shape was principally 
ornamental, and in rare cases it 
extended to drinking cups, or glasses, 
but these were deemed fit only for a 
king; and, though an excellence in 
coloring glass was attained at this 
early period, and long before, which is 


not yet surpassed, the art of producing 
it free from any color — the most dif¬ 
ficult part of the process of glass 
making, since it was readily effected 
by extraneous substances — was scarce¬ 
ly known. We are told that the 
Emperor Nero paid six thousand ses- 
teria (a sum nearly equal to $250,000) 
for two drinking cups, whose value 
chiefly arose from the circumstance of 
their being entirely colorless. The 
poorest person of the present day 
drinks out of glasses in which this 
property is perfect. The glass 
imported into Rome from Alexandria 
was, as already noticed, principally 
ornamental, and all colored ; but this 
coloring is so exquisite, and the work¬ 
manship otherwise of these little frail 
toys so beautiful, that they were used 
and valued as jewels, and so employed 
in adorning the persons of the ancient 
Roman belles and beaux ; and a string 
of glass beads, which no servant girl 
now would wear, was considered an 
ornament to which only the daughter 
of a patrician could pretend. 

From Venice the art of glass-making 
found its way into France, where an 
attempt was made, in 1634, to rival the 
Venetians in the manufacture of mir¬ 
rors. The first essay was unsuccessful; 
but another, made in 1665, in which 
Venetian workmen were employed, had 
better fortune, though in a few years 
afterwards, this establishment, which 
was situated in the village of Tourla- 
ville, near Cherbourg, in the lower 
Normandy, was also threatened with 
ruin by a discovery, or rather improve¬ 
ment, in the art of glass-making, 
effected by one Abraham Theverat. 
This improvement consisted in casting 
plates of much larc er dimensions than 
had been hitherto thought practicable. 
Theverat cast his first plates in Paris, 
and astonished every artist by their 










324 


THE PEOPLES* LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


magnitude. These plates were 84 
inches in height and 50 in breadth, 
while none before had ever exceeded 
45 or 50 inches in length. Theverat 
was bound by his patent to make all 
his plates at least 60 inches in length 
and 50 in breadth. The two compa¬ 
nies—Theverat’s and that at Tourla- 
ville—united their interest, but were 
so unsuccessful, that in 1701 they were 
unable to pay their debts, and were, in 
consequence, compelled to abandon 
several of their furnaces. In 1702 a 
new company was formed under the 
management of Antoine d’Agincourt, 
which realized handsome profits to its 
proprietors, a circumstance which is 
attributed wholly to the greater pru¬ 
dence of d’Agincourt. 

We are told that, early in the 14th 
century the French government made 
a concession in favor of glass-making, 
decreeing not only that no derogation 
from nobility should follow the prac¬ 
tice of the art, but that none save 
gentlemen, or the sons of noblemen, 
should venture to engage in any of its 
branches, even as working artisans. 
This restriction was accompanied by 
the grant of a royal charter of incor¬ 
poration, conveying various important 
privileges, under which the occupation 
became, eventually, a source of great 
wealth to several families of distinction, 
whose descendants have attained some 
of the highest dignities of the state. 

The exact period when the art of 
manufacturing glass was first intro¬ 
duced into England is not easily deter¬ 
mined. As already mentioned, it is 
said to have been brought into that 
country in 1557; bu, we have stated 
a circumstance wh.Ah, we conceive, 
leaves little doubt that glass was man¬ 
ufactured there at i much earlier date. 
In 1557, howevei, it certainly was 
manufactured in England. The finer 


sort of window glass was then made 
at Cretched Friars, in London. The 
firsF flint glass made in England was 
manufactured at Savoy House, in the 
Strand, and the first plate glass, for 
looking-glasses, coach windows, etc., 
was made in Lambeth, in 1673, by 
Venetian workmen brought over by 
the duke of Buckingham. 

The date of the introduction of the 
art of glass making into Scotland is 
more easily determined, because of 
more recent occurrence. It took place 
in the reign of James VI. An exclu¬ 
sive right to manufacture glass within 
the kingdom for the space of thirty- 
one years, was granted by that 
monarch to Lord George Hay, in the 
year 1610. This right his lordship 
transferred, in 1627, for a considerable 
sum, to Thomas Robinson, merchant 
tailor, London, who again disposed of 
it for £250, to Sir Robert Mansell, 
Vice-Admiral of England. The first 
manufactory of glass in Scotland, an 
extremely rude one, was established at 
Wemyss in Fife. Regular works were 
afterward established at Prestonpans ; 
and at Leith glass works, January 7, 
1747, a vessel was made of the extra¬ 
ordinary capacity of 105 imperial gal¬ 
lons. A neat pocket pistol for the moors. 


THE GLASS OF VENICE. 

It may appear strange, but it is 
true, that with all our improvements 
and inventions our ancestors did cer¬ 
tain things that far surpassed any¬ 
thing we can produce in the same 
way, and in fact, our modern novelties 
are often but the result of searches 
after lost arts and dead knowledge. 
Thus it is with the glass manufact¬ 
urers of “ the bride of the sea,” artistic 
Venice. Although her wondrous story 
seems one of fable, and the Doge with 







325 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


his retainers has now forever passed 
away, yet, in the public museum of 
art and in the cabinets of connoiseurs, 
(which being freely translated means 
“knowing gentlemen,”) there are to 
be seen evidences of her industrial art 
and her workmen’s skill. In very 
early times her glass manufacture was 
celebrated; and when in the thir¬ 
teenth century, the Venetian Republic 
aided in taking Constantinople, she 
made good use of the conquest by 
learning secrets from Eastern nations 
concerning the manufacture of colored 
glasses and enamels. At the com¬ 
mencement of the sixteenth century, 
the filagree glass-work was introduced 
on the island of Murano, where the 
furnaces were placed, and a goblet of 
this manufacture has been bid $1,000 
for. This filagree work, though well 
understood by our manufacturers, is 
seldom made, for, from some cause, 
the delicacy of the Venetian tints and 
threads seems to be again unattain¬ 
able. It was produced by making 
thin rods of glass by imbedding 
strings of colored glass or opaque 
white glass in colorless glass, and 
these thin rods were heated, and then 
blown, twisted and welded, and then 
moulded into goblets, vases and jugs. 
The effect is very pretty and unique, 
the stem and thick parts presenting a 
mass of varied colors, which gradually 
thin and spread out in the form of the 
vessel, which seems to be made up of a 
series of colored curves that harmo¬ 
nize with the design of the goblet. It 
is an exceedingly elegant manufact¬ 
ure, and might, we should think, be 
advantageously revived in another 
republic whose flag is composed of 
stars and stripes. 

The first public library was founded 
at Athens, 526 B. C. 


GLASS. 


Plate-Glass is so named from the 
mode of its production, which con¬ 
sists in placing the materials in an 
iron pot or crucible, and subjecting 
them to a degree of heat needed to 
render them fluid, and then pouring 
upon a cast iron table, the thickness 
being equalized by passing a heavy 
iron roller over the mass while in a 
liquid state. The size of the glass is 
regulated by the size of the table, or 
the several divisions into which it 
is separated. When sufficiently an¬ 
nealed, the surface of the plate is 
ground down and finely polished by 
friction, two slabs of glass being brisk¬ 
ly rubbed together for this purpose. 
The best glass plate is polished on both 
sides. This invention is said to have 
originated with a Frenchman named 
Colbert, “ blow-glass ” having formerly 
been used both in Venice and other 
leading marts for the production of 
mirrors, and other purposes for which 
plate-glass is now used. The best 
French-plate has a very smooth and 
faultless surface, and is distinguished 
for its brilliancy, clearness and strength. 

Rough plate-glass is cast by a 
process in all respects similar to that 
before described, only it remains un¬ 
polished. It is used for skylights, 
some times for flooring also, and other 
similar purposes. It was formerly the 
practice in Great Britian to sell glass 
by the superficial foot, according to 
thickness, but without regard to size ; 
but latterly the price is regulated by 
the size, the same as other descriptions 
of glass. Its length seldom, if ever, 
exceeds ten feet, and its thickness 
one and one-half inches ; but it can be 
obtained in all makes of length and 
thickness below the extreme. 

Polished plate glass is usually from 








326 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


3-16 to i inch thick, unless an extra 
thickness is specified; special prices 
being asked for additional thickness. 
It can be had up to sixty superficial 
feet in one square, the price increasing 
per foot, according to the size. It is 
a custom with the trade to charge any 
fraction of an inch, when the glass 
exceeds a certain size, as a full inch. 
If the size runs small or irregular, the 
cost is proportionately greater. Two 
other kinds of plate glass are manu¬ 
factured, known respectively as patent 
plate and patent rolled plate. The 
former is blown in what is termed a 
“ muff,' 1 and then cut and spread into 
a sheet. The latter variety is run into 
an iron mould, and then perforated 
by thin plates of iron wherever it is 
deemed desirable. Rollers of a pecu¬ 
liar pattern also give it a ribbed sur¬ 
face, from which this brand of glass 
receives its name. 

Crown glass is a variety for the 
most part used in England alone. Its 
process of manufacture consists in 
rapidly pouring the material at a par¬ 
ticular state of fusion on a flat table 
of about five feet in diameter, and 
subsequently annealing in an oven. It 
is divided into best, second, third and 
fourth quality. The common or small 
squares under 7 by 9 are called quar¬ 
ries, and are used as a cheap window 
in ordinary lead or wooden casements. 
The maximum size of the best crown 
glass is about 5 superficial feet per 
square. Extra thickness is charged an 
advanced price of twenty to twenty- 
five per cent. 

Sheet glass is blown in a mould, and 
then cut and spread into sheets, as its 
name indicates. It is made in various 
degrees of thickness, according to 
weight, commencing at 15-oz., and 
going up to 42-oz.; the price ascend¬ 
ing with the greater weight. It is 


also supplied in plates, varying from 
about 3 feet 6 inches by 2 feet 6 
inches, up to 6 feet by 3 feet 6 inches. 
Extra sizes, if wanted, are made by 
special contract. Glass when imper¬ 
fectly compounded changes color by 
lapse of time and exposure to the 
atmosphere. It takes on tints of 
green, purple, yellow, or else becomes 
extremely dull or cloudy in appear¬ 
ance. 

Within the last three months there 
has been a material advance in French 
plate and sheet glass, and prices still 
tend upward ; the rise is said to be 
attributable to the demands of opera¬ 
tives for higher wages, a diminished 
production consequent upon the recent 
war, and a more liberal demand from 
England, the United States and other 
foreign countries. Efforts have been 
made from time to time to manufact¬ 
ure plate glass in this country, and 
with considerable success; but the 
ingredients are not usually found in 
sufficient quantities near together to 
make the business very profitable. 
Besides, corundum, one of the com¬ 
ponents, is only thus far obtained in 
this country in small quantities in 
North Carolina, the greater part of it 
being imported. 


ABOUT LOOKING GLASSFS. 

The manufacture of good looking 
glasses, for some unaccountable reason, 
has never been successfully trans¬ 
planted to this country. Our sands 
are much superior to the European. 
England now draws a large proportion 
of her supply of this material from 
Australia, showing that the best Eu¬ 
ropean sand has already been used. 
The sodas manfactured in this country 
are as cheap as those of Europe ; and 
we have coal in abundance. But, not- 








327 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


withstanding ail this, we still rely 
almost entirely upon the European 
factories for the best quality of mir¬ 
rors. 

The modern history of mirrors dates 
from 1688, when Abraham Theverart, 
a French artist, conceived the bold 
idea of casting glass in the way prac¬ 
ticed with metals. By employing this 
process, a very great reduction was 
made in price, and the new manufact¬ 
ure was carried on with marked suc¬ 
cess. In 1691, the establishment now 
under the direction of a company was 
transferred to St. Gobain, where it 
exists to this day, in the enjoyment 
of a green old age. 

St. Gobain, by the beauty of its 
glasses, by their relative cheapness, 
and by the ability of its managers, has 
retained the monopoly, almost exclu¬ 
sively, of the French market, and has, 
besides, maintained a rank abroad not 
excelled by other factories, notwith¬ 
standing the active competition of 
Belgium and England. This factory 
has six strong competitors in England, 
especially in looking glasses used for 
windows. The most important factory 
of the continent, after St. Gobain, is 
situated at Sainte de Marie d’Oignies, 
near Charleroi, Belgium. In 1860, St. 
Gobain alone manufactured 200,000 
square metres; the six English fac¬ 
tories, 350,000 metres ; Belgium, 110,- 
000, and Manheim, 70,000. 

The French looking-glass factories 
employ 5,000 workmen in the manu¬ 
facture of the glass proper, and of 
course there are thousands more 
employed in the various branches of 
business dependent upon this indus¬ 
try. The process of manufacture has 
been so much improved that prices are 
to-day fifty per cent, lower than 
twenty years ago, and thirty-two per 
cent, lower than five years ago. 


The great St. Gobain Works, in 
France, manufacture their own sodas, 
emery, colcothar, and tin sheets. 
They buy their tin in Amsterdam, 
from the Dutch East India Com¬ 
pany. This company only sells at 
wholesale. They get the mercury from 
Spain. These facts show the advan¬ 
tage of a location on the ocean 
border. We will give an example of 
these advantages. Sodas must be 
made on the spot, and thereby an 
important saving made in freight 
expenses, as soda is obtained from sea 
salt by transforming it into sulphate 
of soda, then the sulphate into car¬ 
bonate. In this latter state it contains 
a large quantity of water — from 52 
to 66 per cent.— so that 190 pounds 
of this salt represent only 34 to 38 
per cent, of dry carbonate of soda. 
A factory making this carbonate on 
the spot, would save the freight not 
only of the pure carbonate, but also of 
the six-tenths of water it contains. 


A HISTORY OF THE CANARY. 

The canary, as its name implies, was 
a native of the Canary Islands. Its 
color, originally, was a greenish gray. 
Domestication has completely changed 
it. The canary was first known to 
Europeans early in the sixteenth cen¬ 
tury, but it owes its general introduc¬ 
tion to an accident. A trading vessel 
sailing to Leghorn from the Canary 
Islands brought a number of these 
birds among its cargo. In a violent 
storm off the Mediterranean island of 
Elba, the vessel was wrecked, and the 
birds took refuge on the island. The 
climate was favorable, they kept hardy 
and strong, and presently all Europe 
went to the importation of canaries 
until they became extirpated from 
their native country. The mountain- 








328 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


eers of the Hartz country had been 
raising birds for a long while, and they 
became interested in canaries, and took 
the lead in their culture. You see, 
these mountaineers lived in a wooded 
country, where birds abound. By de¬ 
grees they began to cultivate birds, 
and now every farmer and shepherd has 
a great room in his house where he 
raises birds. The women attend to 
them during the day, and the men 
assist when their other work is fin¬ 
ished. At first, canaries were taught 
to sing by association with other song¬ 
sters, nightingales and skylarks, whose 
tunes they caught; and then the Ger¬ 
man people used to sit in the room 
with the birds and play to them on 
pipes. Thus the canary learned a song 
that is composed of many other songs 
— the bow-trill, the bell-note, the 
flute, the water-bubble, the nightin¬ 
gale’s note, and the woodlark and sky¬ 
lark note — and a canary must have all 
these combinations to be perfect and 
valuable. The Hartz mountaineer is 
an excellent judge. No noisy bursts 
of song for him. H 3 must hear every 
note of the octave sweetly and regu¬ 
larly touched, creating a long, swelling, 
harmonious air, and a bird who can’t 
do this is not allowed to be near the 

others. Thev would hear and catch 
•/ 

his defects. So much for the train¬ 
ing. 

Now this is how we buy the birds: 
Our agents are in Europe all the time. 
They make their headquarters at some 
of the little cities at the ioot of the 
hills — at Nordhausen, Duderstadt, or 
Northern. There are women there 
who go about from house to house all 
over the mountains, buying birds, and 
when they have filled the great crate 
which they carry on their backs, they 
return to the city from whence they 
started, and sell their birds to the 


agents. I dare not tell you what they 
cost — it is not a great deal — but the 
importation is very expensive. The 
agents take the birds to the nearest 
seaport by rail, and then they engage 
double as much room as the birds take 
up on the steamer, so that they can 
handle them; every bird must be 
given food and drink every day. One 
million are sent away annually, and 
one house in New York sells forty 
thousand a year. The average bird 
brings $4, but a splendid singer will 
sell for $6 or $7. It is an erroneous 
idea that the dark canaries are the best 
singers. The best singers are those 
that are raised on the tops of the 
mountains. They are hardy and their 
voices are rich and strong. The city 
of Nordhausen supplies the most val¬ 
uable canaries. Those from the val¬ 
leys are always inferior; and this rule 
applies to all the songsters from the 
Hartz region. The long breeds, or 
Belgium canaries, famous for their 
size and shape, are next to the German 
birds in popular favor, but they rarely 
ever sing well. 


ORIGIN OF PRINTING. 

Like all grand discoveries, the origin 
of printing was exceedingly simple. 
In the year 1420, a certain old gentle¬ 
man named Lawrence Coster, lived in 
Haarlem. He was fond of taking sol¬ 
itary walks in the woods, and one day 
fell idly to work with his knife on a 
smooth piece of birch bark, and cut 
several letters so neatly that after his 
return home he stamped them on 
paper; the impression was so good 
that he naturally fell to thinking of 
what might be done with such letters 
cut in wood. By blackening them 
with ink, he made black stamps upon 
paper ; and by dint of much thinking 









329 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


and much working, he came, in time, 
to the stamping of whole broadsides of 
letters — which was really printing. 
The Dutch writers claim that this 
grand discovery did poor Coster very 
little good, as a dishonest apprentice, 
who had wit enough to understand 
the value of such a discovery, ran 
away from his master, taking with 
him a great many of the wooden 
blocks, which it had required so much 
ingenuity and patience to fashion, and 
unlawfully appropriated the credit of 
the grand discovery. It is hinted that 
the runaway apprentice was John 
Faust or John Gutenberg; but the 
Germans justly say there is no proof 
of this. “ It is certain, however,” says 
a contributor to one of our first-class 
journals, “that there was a Lawrence 
(Custos, of the cathedral) who busied 
himself with stamping letters and en¬ 
graving. His statue is on the market¬ 
place in Haarlem, and his rough 
looking books are, some of them, now 
in the 1 State House ’ of Haarlem. 
They are dingy, and printed with bad 
ink, and seem to have been struck 
from large engraved blocks, and not 
from movable types. They are with¬ 
out any date, but antiquarians assign 
them to a period somewhat earlier 
than any book of Faust, or of Guten¬ 
berg, who are commonly called the 
discoverers of printing. As usual, it 
was for future ages to reap the full 
benefit of the art of one patient, unap¬ 
preciated worker.” 


THE INTRODUCTION OF PRINTING 
IN AMERICA. 

It is an enduring honor to the 
memory of the first settlers in New 
England, the Pilgrims, that the diffu¬ 
sion of knowledge belonged to the 
subjects of their earliest care. Only 


18 years after they first set foot on 
Plymouth Rock, they established, in 
1638, the first printing press on the 
North American continent, at Cam¬ 
bridge, while the first publication was 
made by Daye, in 1639, entitled The 
Freeman s Oath. This Daye had been 
engaged by Jos. Glover, a rich non¬ 
conformist preacher, who came from 
Europe with a stock of printing mate¬ 
rial, and died on the passage. An old 
marine commander, William Pierce, 
edited an almanac in the same year, 
and in 1640, Revs. Weld and Eliot 
edited “ The Psalms, newly turned 
into Meter,” and its sale was an emi¬ 
nent success, passing through 70 edi¬ 
tions in 114 years ; it was reprinted in 
England and Scotland. Other relig¬ 
ious books appeared, and in 1641, a 
book entitled “ The Body of Liberty,” 
containing one hundred laws of the 
colony. 

Daye, who was a very deficient com¬ 
positor, as proved by his technical 
blunders, was superseded, in 1649, by 
Samuel Green, who sometimes is 
called the first printer in America, 
while Daye obtained 300 acres of land 
from the court of Massachusetts, for 
“being the first that set up printing.” 

We find next, poems by Anne Brad- 
street (wife of the Governor), which 
were reprinted in England, and several 
other works of a smaller kind, as well 
as religious works, which we will pass 
over. 

In 1653, a catechism was printed in 
the Indian language, by Eliot, for the 
benefit of the Indians, while in 1654, 
a beginning was made to print regu¬ 
larly all laws made by the court, from 
500 to 700 copies, to be paid for “ in 
wheate or otherwise,” at the rate of 
a penny a sheet, and a copy to be dis¬ 
tributed to each freeman in every 
town. 









330 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


In 1655, a second press, with furni¬ 
ture and material, was imported from 
England, and in 1659, the psalms were 
printed in the Indian tongue, while 
the first American edition of the Bible 
was issued in 1661 and 1663. 

Next to printing comes book-bind¬ 
ing; and the first book-binding of any 
account was that of the Bibles 
printed ; to give the reader an idea of 
the slowness proceeding from want of 
proper system, and improved tools, it 
must be said that the best binder could 
only bind one Bible per day, for which 
he wanted 3s. 6d, or 84 cents of our 
present currency, and then he had to 
supply his own material, thread, glue, 
pasteboard, leather, etc. 

After the Bibles were printed, the 
corporation presented the whole print¬ 
ing establishment to Cambridge Col¬ 
lege, while the court of Massachusetts, 
either jealous of the influence of the 
press, or desiring to imitate England, 
appointed, in 1662, two licensers to 
watch its operation, and to determine 
what books it would be safe to print. 
Probably the true cause was, that two 
religious works had appeared, in which 
were some expressions of heretical ten¬ 
dency (Universalist opinions). Next 
an order came that no press should be 
allowed anywhere except at Cambridge, 
and nobody allowed to print anything 
without a special license from the 
court. As an example of the meddle¬ 
some spirit and intolerant feelings of 
the authorities at that time, it may 
be stated that after the censors had 
permitted the printing of Thomas 
aKempis’ “de Imitatione Christi, 11 it 
was found that some expressions did 
not conform to the orthodox belief ; 
the press was stopped by the police, 
and the work carefully reviewed before 
permission was given to continue the 
printing. 


The first copyright law was enacted 
in 1672, stipulating that no printer 
should print or sell any more copies 
than were agreed upon, and paid for 
by the owner, and next securing copy¬ 
rights for seven years. In 1674, per¬ 
mission was given to John Foster to 
establish a second press in Boston, 
while the court at the same time ap¬ 
pointed two additional licensers, 
Mather and Thacher, two orthodox 
divines, of which the latter wrote the 
first medical book published in 
America. It was on small pox and 
measles. 

Then came the struggle in England 
for and against the liberty of the 
press. Contrary to the pleading of 
Milton for its freedom, the press was 
placed under a board of censors, and 
Governor Duncan, of New York, was 
instructed to “allow no printing 
press,” while Berkeley, the Governor 
of Virginia, said, “ I thank God we 
have no free schools nor printing, and 
I hope we shall not have these hun¬ 
dred years. God defend us from both.” 
And when James the II. came to his- 
throne, he sent Andros, in 1686, 
to Boston, to prohibit printing, but 
before he came, Randolph, the col¬ 
lector of customs, had already forbid¬ 
den the printing of an almanac. 

In 1690, Richard Pierce, of Boston, 
printed the first newspaper in the 
New World, but it was at once sup¬ 
pressed by the authorities, because it 
came out “contrary to law, and con¬ 
tained reflections of a very high na¬ 
ture.” All the copies were destroyed ; 
only one escaped, found its way to 
England, and is now among the colo¬ 
nial State papers in London; it bears 
the following date and imprint: “ Bos¬ 
ton, Thursday, Sept. 25,1690. Printed 
by R. Pierce for Benjamin Harris, at 
the London Coffee House, 1690.” The 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


331 


publisher promises that the country 
"* shall be furnished once a month (or 
if a glut of occurrences happen, 
oftener) with an account of such con¬ 
siderable things as have occurred unto 
our notice ; to give a faithful relation 
of all such things to enlighten the 
public as to the occurrents of Divine 
Providence,” the circumstances of 
public affairs at home and abroad, to 
attempt the curing, or at least the 
charming of the spirit ot lying, then 
prevalent, and to aid in the tracing 
out and convicting the raisers of false 
reports. 

The news consists of the departure 
of 2,500 troops and 32 sail of ships for 
Canada, the ravages of small-pox and 
malignant fevers in Boston. A fire 
broke out in Boston, which destroyed 
many houses, and caused besides loss 
of life, also that of “ the best furnished 
press in America, a loss not presently 
to be repaired.” The landing of King 
William in Ireland, with 14,000 foot 
and horse ; and other news ; it was, in 
fact, to all intents and purposes, a live 
newspaper, besides the very first of its 
kind in America. 


WONDER OF NEWSPAPER PRINTING. 

The New York Herald claims that 
a recent Sunday edition consisted of 
one hundred and fifty thousand copies. 
Each number consisted of twenty 
pages: that is, one hundred and twenty 
columns, of which seventy-eight were 
advertisements, and forty-two reading 
matter. The Herald says : 

“ A detail which will be perfectly 
new to non-professionals is, that to 
produce one hundred and fifty thou¬ 
sand copies, it is necessary to take nine 
hundred thousand impressions. To 
accomplish this in the short time 
allowed, five rotary Hoe presses, of 


eight and ten cylinders each, and two 
Bullock perfecting presses, were kept 
rolling off at the rate of one thousand 
a minute. To drive these huge 
presses, two large engines, of eighty 
horse power, were kept in motion by 
burning six tons of coal in the fur¬ 
naces. To form the stereotype plates 
for the cylinders, eight tons of type 
metal were used to cast one hundred 
and forty-eight plates, weighing, when 
finished and dressed, thirty-eight 
pounds each. The ink on a single 
copy would not be taken into observa¬ 
tion by the average observer, but it 
required seven hundred and twenty- 
five pounds to keep the rollers pre¬ 
pared to leave the imprint of their 
kisses on the eighteen million virgin 
pages that were to glow at daylight 
with the news. And these rollers 
were composed of five hundred pounds 
of glue, mingled with one thousand 
pounds of honey. Then the virgin 
pages — the paper on which all this is 
printed — passes, sheet by sheet, 
through the presses, handled by eighty 
men and boys, until seventeen tons, 
or thirty-four thousand pounds, are 
printed on both sides. If you were to 
pile those sheets one upon another, 
they would make a monument one 
hundred and twenty feet high. 


SAGO. 

Sago is the starch obtained in a 
peculiar manner from several kinds of 
palm trees in the Indian Archipelago, 
in Assam, on the Coromandel coast, 
and in Ceylon. It is in all cases pro¬ 
duced from the large mass of pith that 
fills the stems; therefore it is neces¬ 
sary to cut the trees down. The stems 
are cut from one to two feet in length, 
split open and the pith dug out, cut 
small, placed in a trough and worked 










332 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


in clean water to wash out the dregs ; 
this makes the water white and turbid, 
and it is then run off into another 
vessel. Fresh washings of the pith 
take place until it ceases to yield any 
starch. The water of the several 
washings is put together and allowed 
to settle, when the starch is soon de¬ 
posited. The clear water is then 
poured off and the deposit dried. 
This is the ordinary Sago Flour of 
commerce, of which large quantites 
are used for starching calicoes and 
other fabrics. When prepared for 
food it is either in the state called 
Pearl or Granulated Sago. The for¬ 
mer is in small round grains of a 
pearly white color, varying in size 
from that of poppy seed to a grain of 
millet. The granulated is also in 
round grains but of a larger size, 
sometimes nearly as large as a pea. 
There are several varieties, differing 
considerably in color — some quite 
white, while others having the pecu¬ 
liar reddish brown of radish seed 
which in appearance they resemble 
very much. The Malays have a way 
of pearling and granulating their sago 
that the Europeans do not understand, 
but there are good reasons to believe 
that heat is employed, because the 
starch is partially transformed into 
gum. It is not easily dissolved in hot 
water like ordinary starch, hence it can 
be employed in making puddings, etc., 
and in this way forms a valuable arti¬ 
cle of food, being cheap, light, nutri¬ 
tious and easy of digestion. 

The quantity of Sago and Sago 
Flour imported into the United States 
in 1874, was nearly 2,000,000 pounds, 
valued at $60,000. The quantity im¬ 
ported into Great Britain in 1867 was 
16,700,000 pounds, valued at half a 
million dollars, most of which was 
consumed at home. 


BROOM CORN—WHERE IT IS GROW* 
AND MANUFACTURED. 


Broom corn, which is now one of 
the most extensive products of the 
land, was introduced into the country 
by Dr. Franklin. It is stated that, 
while examining a corn-stalk brought 
to him from Europe, he discovered a 
single seed, which he planted in his 
garden, and from which corn was 
propagated. Formerly, Massachusetts 
was the only State in the Union where 
this corn was raised, or the manufact¬ 
ure of brooms carried on to any 
extent. Boston, for many years, was 
the great point for the distribution of 
these manufactured goods. The rais¬ 
ing of corn, and the manufacture of 
brooms, extended to nearly every one 
of the New England States, but now 
there is hardly an acre devoted to the 
broom-corn culture in that entire 
region. Since the war, farmers have 
raised tobacco in its place, as they find 
it more remunerative. Illinois is the 
largest producer of broom-corn at 
present; Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, 
Tennessee and New York coming 
next. Chicago, Cincinnati and New 
York are the centres of business in 
this product, the latter city being the 
great depot of manufactured goods. 
There are two or three large manufac¬ 
tories in New Hampshire, and quite 
a number in Massachusetts, Pennsyl¬ 
vania, and New York, the smaller ones 
being located h^re and there. 

The following figures, which are as 
correct as can be ascertained, show the 
quantity of broom-corn annually man¬ 
ufactured into brooms, in the Canadas 
and various States of the Union: Can¬ 
ada and Provinces, 1,050 tons; New 
England, 1,148 tons; New York, 
4,400 tons ; Michigan, 700 tons ; Indi¬ 
ana, Illinois and Iowa, 1,350 tons; 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


333 


Wisconsin and Minnesota, 750 tons ; 
Ohio, 2,150 tons ; Pennsylvania, 1,500 
tons, and Maryland, 750 tons. 


HOW TO CONSTRUCT AN ISOLIAN 

HARP. 


Make a box, with the top, bottom, 
and sides of thin wood, and the ends of 
1^ inch beech; form it the same 
length as the width of the window in 
which it is to be placed. The box 
should be three or four inches deep, 
and six or seven inches wide. In the 
top of the box, — which acts as a 
sounding-board, — make three circular 
holes about two inches in diameter, 
and an equal distance apart. Glue 
across the sounding-board, about 21- 
inches from each end, two pieces of 
hard wood i inch thick, and \ inch 
high, to serve as bridges. You must 
now procure from any instrument- 
maker, twelve steel pegs, similar to 
those of a piano-forte, and twelve small 
brass pins. Insert them in the follow¬ 
ing manner into the beech: First, 
commence with a brass pin, then insert 
a steel peg, and so on, placing them 
alternately i inch apart, to the num¬ 
ber of twelve. Now for the other 
end, which you must commence with a 
steel peg (exactly opposite the brass 
pin at the opposite end), then a brass 
pin, and so on, alternately, to the 
number of twelve; by this arrange¬ 
ment you have a steel peg and a brass 
pin always opposite each other, which 
is done so that the pressure of the 
strings on the instrument shall be 
uniform. Now, string the instrument 
with twelve first violin strings, mak¬ 
ing a loop at one end of each string, 
which put over the brass pins and 
wind the other ends round the oppo¬ 
site steel pegs. Tune them in unison, 
but do not draw them tight. To in¬ 


crease the current of air, a thin board 
may be placed about two inches above 
the strings, supported at each end by 
two pieces of wood. Place the instru¬ 
ment in a partly opened window; to 
increase the draught open the opposite 
door. 


MIGRATION OF PLANTS. 

“ Plants are seldom motionless. 
The wind wafts the seed of the dan¬ 
delion. The waves bear the nut of 
the cocoa palm. Man has carried the 
apple and pear, the apricot and the 
peach, from the highlands of Asia to 
the far West. The cerealia have 
spread over all the world, and have 
become so cosmopolite that the land 
of their birth is unknown. Some 
plants almost seem to attach them¬ 
selves to particular races. The com¬ 
mon plantain is called by the North 
American Indians 1 the White Man’s 
Footstep.’ Currents of air carry seeds 
and the eggs of insects and infusoria. 
To settle this formerly disputed ques¬ 
tion, a German philosopher, Unger, 
placed several plates of glass, carefully 
cleaned, between the almost air-tight 
double sashes with which he protected 
his study against the rigors of a fierce 
northern climate. Six months later 
he took them out, and examined the 
dust that had fallen on them, through 
imperceptible cracks and crevioes, with 
a microscope. The result was that he 
discovered in the apparently inorganic 
dust the pollen of eight distinct plants, 
the seeds of eleven varieties of fungus, 
the eggs of four higher infusoria, and 
living individuals of at least one 
genus.” 

Observations like this go far to dis¬ 
prove the evidences of new created life, 
which are often discovered both in 
natural and artificial compositions. It 










334 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


seems sometimes almost impossible to 
imagine how eggs or seeds could have 
either found admittance or retained 
vitality under circumstances where life 
appears, and it has not been deemed 
inconsistent with revelation to suppose 
the work of creation still going on. 
But such instances as above recorded 
induce a great reluctance to believe in 
newly originated life, and to induce a 
belief that the varieties of animals and 
plants which appear at intervals, are 
but modifications generated from pre¬ 
existing species. 


STYLE IN THE OLDEN TIMES. 

In 1782, Governor Hancock, of Mas¬ 
sachusetts, received his guests in a red 
velvet cap, within which was one of 
fine linen, turned up over the edge of 
the velvet one or two inches. He 
wore a blue damask gown, lined with 
silk, a white satin embroidered waist¬ 
coat, black satin small clothes, white 
silk stockings, and red morocco slip¬ 
pers. The Judges of the Supreme 
Court of Massachusetts, as late as 
1783, wore robes of scarlet, faced with 
black velvet; in Summer, black silk 
gowns. Gentlemen wore coats of 
every variety oi color, generally the 
cape and collar of velvet, of a different 
color from the coat. In 1780, General 
Washington arrived in New York 
from Mount Yernon, to assume the 
duties of the Presidency. He was 
dressed in a full suit of Virginia 
homespun. On his visit to New Eng¬ 
land he wore the old Continental 
uniform, except on the Sabbath, when 
he appeared in black. John Adams, 
when vice-President, wore a sword, 
and walked about the street with his 
hat under his arm. At his levees in 
Philadelphia, President Washington 
was clad in black velvet, his hair pow¬ 


dered and gathered behind in a silk 
bag, yellow gloves, knee and shoe 
buckles ; he held in his hand a cocked 
hat, ornamented with a cockade, 
fringed about an inch deep with black 
feathers; a long sword in a white 
scabbard, with polished steel hilt, 
hung at his hip. 


RAILROADING IN EARLY DAYS. 

When the Hartford and New Haven 
road was first opened, it had very 
meagre facilities; the road-bed was 
poor, had only strap-rails, which were 
all the time curling up and running 
through the car floors, and the cars 
were small and the locomotives weak. 
In fact, it didn’t take much to block a 
train in those days. Sometimes an 
inch of snow on the rails would do it. 
Henry C. White, one of the first con¬ 
ductors on the road, tells how he and 
the baggage-master used to sit in front 
of the locomotive, one on each side, 
and brush off the snow from the rails 
with a broom as the train slowly 
crawled along. Each had a pail of 
sand, and sprinkled a handful on the 
rail when necessary. The driving 
wheels (engines had only one pair 
tnen) used to slip round and round, 
and torment them almost to death. 
On one occasion a train got “ stuck '' 
on the Yalesville grade by one inch of 
snow, and the wood and water gave 
out before the locomotive could over¬ 
come it. At last they got out the 
neighbors, yoked four pairs of oxen to 
the train, and drew it, passengers, bag¬ 
gage and all, into Meriden, with flying 
colors. 

In the early days of the road, the 
stage coach drivers used to regard the 
cars with great contempt. Indeed, 
thirty years ago, the passenger trains 
were three or four hours on the road 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


335 


to New Haven, and the stage coaches 
went in about the same time. Super¬ 
intendent Davidson remembers riding 
with his father in a carriage drawn by 
two horses, in 1840, which had a race 
with a passenger train near Walling¬ 
ford, where the turnpike and railroad 
are parallel for three or four miles, and 
during all that time the carriage kept 
even with the train. There were only 
two trains each way, daily, then, both 
carrying passengers and freight. The 
old cars were divided into tnree com¬ 
partments, opened on the side, and had 
twenty-four seats. 

The locomotive had only twelve- 
inch cylinders, and no cabs to protect 
the engineer and fireman from the 
weather. The oldest locomotives were 
the Hartford, Quinnipiac, Charter Oak 
and New Haven. 


CURIOUS FACTS ABOUT CLOTHING. 

Washing days at the times of the 
Tudors and Stuarts, though a little 
more important than in the preceding 
ages, had none of those unpleasant¬ 
nesses and terrors which are said now 
to accompany them. Articles which 
required washing were “few and far 
between,” whilst those of a texture 
which would not “ stand a wash ” 
were usually worn. The dyer was far 
more commonly employed than the 
laundress, and his trade thus covered a 
“ multitude of sins ” of omission of 
personal cleanliness which the laun¬ 
dress would have remedied with more 
healthy results. 

Velvets, taffets, and rich silks were 
in the middle ages often worn by the 
wealthy without any underclothing 
whatever, while the domestics and 
people of lower order wore coarse 
woolen, also without underclothing. 
The possession of a linen shirt even 


with the highest nobles was a matter 
of note, and but few wardrobes con¬ 
tained them. 

Under the Tudors’ night-gowns 
were worn, though they had not been 
before; but they were formed mostly 
of silk or velvet, so that no washing 
was required. Anne Boleyn's night 
dress was made of black satin, bound 
with black taffeta, and edged with vel¬ 
vet of the same color. One of Queen 
Elizabeth’s night-gowns was of black 
velvet, trimmed with silk lace, and 
lined with fur, and in 1568 her Maj¬ 
esty ordered George Brady man to 

deliver “ threescore and sixe of the 

\ 

best sable shymies, to furnish as a 
nightgown.” In another warrant 
from her Majesty in 1572 she orders 
the delivery of “ twelve yards of pur¬ 
ple velvet, frized on the back syde 
with white and russet silks,” for a 
night-gown for herself, and also orders 
the delivery of fourteen yards of murry 
damask for the “makyng of a nyght- 
gown for the Erie of Leycester.” 
Night-dresses for ladies were, at a later 
period, called night-vails, and in the 
reign of Queen Anne it became the 
fashion for them to be worn in the 
daytime on the streets, over the usual 
dress. Night-caps were mostly of silks 
and velvets, and these, with the vel¬ 
vet night-dresses, the silken shirts, and 
other matters of a like kind, eased the 
laundress, though they must have 
added to the discomfort of the wearer. 


AMERICAN INVENTIONS. 

The cotton gin, without which the 
machine-spinner and the power loom 
would be helpless, is American. The 
power-shuttle, which permits an 
unlimited enlargement of the breadth 
of the web, is American. The planing- 
machine is American. Navigation by 










336 


- THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


steam is American. The mower and 
reaper are American. The rotary 
printing presses are American. The 
hot-air engine is American. The 
sewing machine is American. The 
machine manufacture of wool-cards is 
American. The whole Indiarrubber 
industry is American. The band-saw 
originated, we believe, in America. 
The machine manufacture of horse¬ 
shoes is American. The sand-blast, 
of which the large capabilities are yet 
to be developed, is American. The 
gauge-lathe is American. The only 
successful composing machine for 
printers is American. The grain 
elevator is American. The artificial 
manufacture of ice was originally 
invented by Prof. A. S. Twining, an 
American. The electro-magnet was 
invented, and immediately after its 
invention was first practically applied, 
in transmitting telegraphic signals, by 
Prof. Joseph Henry, an American. 
The telegraphic instrument introduced 
a few years later into public use, 
which has since obtained universal 
acceptance, was invented by Samuel 
F. B. Morse, an American.— 


LOCOMOTIVE CAPRICES. 


It is perfectly well known to expe¬ 
rienced engineers that if a dozen dif¬ 
ferent locomotive engines were made 
at the same time, of the same power, 
for the same purpose, of like materials, 
in the same factory, each of these 
locomotive engines would come with 
its own peculiar whims and ways, 
only ascertainable by experience. One 
engine will take a good deal of wood 
and water at once; another will not 
hear to such a thing, but insists on 
being coaxed by spadefuls and bucket¬ 
fuls. One is disposed to start off 


when required at the top of his speed; 
another must have a little time to 
warm at his work and get well into it. 
These peculiarities are so accurately 
mastered by skillful drivers that only 
particular men can persuade engines 
to do their best. It would seem as if 
some of these “ excellent monsters ” 
declared on being brought from the 
stable : “ If its Smith who is to drive, 
I won’t go: if its my friend Stokes, 
I’m agreeable to anything.'’ All loco¬ 
motive engines are low-spirited in 
damp and foggy weather. They have 
a great satisfaction in their work 
when the air is crisp and frosty. At 
such a time they are very cheerful and 
brisk, but they strongly object to haze 
and mist. These are points of char¬ 
acter on which they are united. It is 
in their peculiarities and varieties of 
character that they are the most 
remarkable. 


THE PROCESS OF GILDING SILK. 

' ______ 

The process of gilding silk, now used 
in some of the European tinsel fac¬ 
tories, is thus described: It is first 
essential that the silk be of superior 
quality, free from knots and roughness. 
The gum must be boiled out of it, and 
it must be tinged to the shade of 
a light orange; it is then wound 
on bobbins, the end of the thread 
being passed over a wire, and sub¬ 
sequently, under a roller, which works 
in a trough containing a glutinous but 
transparent liquid. It is now made to 
pass over a reel attached to an endless 
screw or threaded spindle, so arranged 
that it lays on a brass cylinder the 
thread of silk, as cords are wound 
round the handle of a whip, without 
overlapping, until the cylinder is com¬ 
pletely covered with the silk, when the 
thread is broken. The length of the 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


337 


skein of thread depends, therefore, 
upon the size of the cylinder and fine¬ 
ness of the thread, but the cylinder 
cannot be of a size larger than can be 
spanned by a single leaf of gold. The 
cylinder being covered with silk in a 
gummy state, the book with the gold 
leaf is opened and laid on the palm of 
the hand ; the machine — something 
like a turning-lathe — is moved ; the 
edge of the leaf is made to touch the 
gummed silk, and it is quickly drawn 
round the cylinder, covering the silk. 
This is repeated, until the entire sur¬ 
face of the roller is covered with gold 
leaf. The next operation consists in 
fastening a piece of cloth or washed 
leather upon a slip of wood, something 
like a razor-strop ; the roller is turned 
round and the strop pressed firmly 
upon the leaf, which not only attaches 
the letter closer to the silk, but sep¬ 
arates it between each two windings 
of the finest thread. Thus one side 
of the finest thread is gilded. If gold 
and green, or any other color, is desired 
in combination, it is only necessary 
first to dye the thread the required 
color, and then, by gilding one side, 
the combination wished is secured. 
To gild the entire thread, it is simply 
necessary to wind the half-gilded 
thread on to another roller. 


PAPER FOR TRACING. 

Sometimes it is convenient to have 
tracing paper only temporarily trans¬ 
parent, and to obtain this, it is only 
necessary to wet the paper in benzine. 
After a time the benzine will evap¬ 
orate, and the original opacity of the 
paper will be restored to it. In this 
way a design can be transferred to any 
part of a sheet of paper, without the 
necessity of employing regular tracing 
paper for the purpose. 


SOUND. 

In an airless world not a sound could 
be heard. A clock placed under the 
receiver of an air-pump in such a way 
that the striking of the clapper will 
continue after the air has been ex¬ 
hausted, is a practical example of this. 
While the receiver is full of air the 
sound will be quite audible; when the 
air is exhausted, there will be perfect 
silence. If the air be again introduced, 
there will be a slight sound, which will 
grow in intensity as the air becomes 
denser. At the top of the highest 
mountains the report of a pistol is 
scarcely louder than the noise of an 
ordinary fire-cracker, let off at the level 
of the sea. Above three miles in the 
air dead silence reigns. The whistle 
of a steam-engine can be heard ten 
thousand feet in the air. The barking 
of a dog six thousand feet; the shouts 
of a human being eight thousand: 
above sixteen thousand feet a sound 
rarely, if ever, reaches. 


THE HUMAN BODY. 

The muscles of the human jaw 
exert a force of 534 lbs. The quan¬ 
tity of pure water which blood con¬ 
tains in its natural state is very 
great; it amounts to almost seven- 
eighths. Kiel estimates the surface 
of the lungs at 150 square feet, or ten 
times that of the external body. The 
blood is a fifth the weight of the 
body. A man is taller in the morn¬ 
ing than at night to the extent of 
half an inch or more, owing to the 
relaxation of the cartillages. There is 
iron enough in the blood of forty-two 
men to make a plowshare of twenty- 
four pounds, or thereabouts. The 
human brain is the twenty-eighth 
part of the body, but in the horse the 













338 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


brain is not more than the four-hun¬ 
dredth. The number of bones in the 
frame-work of the human body is 260, 
108 of which are in the feet and 
hands, there being in each 27. The 
quantity of blood in adults is on an 
average 30 pounds, which passes 
through the heart once in four min¬ 
utes. Only one-tenth of the human 
body is solid matter. A dead body 
weighing 120 pounds was dried in an 
oven, by way of experiment, till all 
moisture was expelled, when its weight 
was found to be but 12 pounds. 
Egyptian mummies are bodies thor¬ 
oughly dried, and usually weigh about 
7 pounds. The lungs of an adult 
ordinarily inhale 40 cubic inches of air 
at every inspiration, and if we breathe 
20 times in a minute the quantity of 
air consumed in that period will be 
800 cubic inches, or 48,000 inches an 
hour, and 1,152,000 inches in a day, 
which is equal to 86 hogsheads. 


OBTAINING NEWS IN OLD TIMES. 

David Hall, of the Journal of 
Commerce , was the first one to organ¬ 
ize a plan to obtain news in advance 
of contemporaries. The old custom 
of obtaining news from incoming ves¬ 
sels, was to board them after they had 
come to anchor in the bay, and get the 
latest news and papers. These were 
taken to the offices of the papers 
and prepared for publication. Hall 
equipped a fast schooner, called the 
Journal of Commerce, and cruised for 
news in the lower bay. Whenever 
a ship hove in sight, he boarded her, 
got the news, and then crowded on all 
sail for the battery. While coming 
up, an editor on board the schooner 
would examine all the news, prepare 
his copy for the printer, and when the 
vessel touched the wharf, a messenger 


sped away with it to the office of the 
paper, and soon the news was made 
public, before the boats of other papers 
had reached the ship that brought it. 
Such enterprise was looked upon as a 
piece of great extravagance, that 
would soon ruin the newspaper in¬ 
dulging in it. But the result proved 
the wisdom of the action, in the in¬ 
creased circulation of the paper. This 
was the origin of the Journal of Com¬ 
merce, Jr., and of the extra paper, 
which is so peculiarly an American 
institution. Other journals soon fol¬ 
lowed in the steps of their successful 
rival, and soon a company was formed 
for the purpose of collecting the ships’ 
news for the daily papers. 

In 1813, Richard Haughton started 
the pony express, by means of which 
he was enabled to publish the election 
returns from every town in Massachu¬ 
setts the morning following the day of 
election. Soon James Watson Webb 
established a pony express between 
Washington and New York, by means 
of which, news from the Capitol was 
published in New York only two days 
old. Now it is published before it is 
two hours old, and sometimes before it 
happens ! 

When the Long Island railroad was 
finished, Montauk Point was made 
a news-station, where incoming steam¬ 
ers were boarded, the foreign news 
received and sent to New York. 
Steamers now are met by the press- 
boats at Sandy Hook, and news tele¬ 
graphed from there to the principal 
papers. 

The origin of the word u news¬ 
paper,” is not, as many suppose, from 
the fact of its containing new things ; 
but in a former time (1795 to 1830) it 
was the custom to put over the period¬ 
ical publications of the day the initial 
letters of the compass, N. E. W. S., to 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


339 


show that the journal has information 
from all quarters of the globe, North, 
East, West, South. Hence the use 
of the word news before all papers 
of general information.— 


HAIR SPRINGS. 


Hair-springs, says a writer in the 
Victoria Magazine , are made in the 
factory, of finest English steel, which 
comes upon spools like thread. To 
the naked eye it is as round as a hair, 
but under the microscope it becomes 
a flat steel ribbon. This ribbon is 
inserted between the jaws of a fine 
gauge, and the dial hand shows its 
diameter to be two twenty-five hun¬ 
dredths of an inch. A hair plucked 
from a man’s head measures three 
twenty-five hundredths — one from the 
head of a girl at a neighboring bench 
two twenty-five hundredths. Actually, 
however, the finest hair is twice as thick 
as the steel ribbon, for the hair com¬ 
presses one-half between the metallic 
jaws of the gauge. A hair-spring 
weighs one-fifteenth thousandth of a 
pound troy. In straight line it is a 
foot long. 

PRINTING IN CHINA. 

Two pages are written by a person 
trained to the business, on a sheet of 
thin paper, divided in columns by 
black lines, and in the space between 
the two pages the title of the work 
and the number of the chapter and 
page are written. When the sheet 
has been printed, it is folded down 
through this space, so as to bring the 
title, etc., partly on each page. The 
sheet, when ready for printing, is 
pasted face downward on a smooth 
block of wood, made usually from the 
jpear or plum tree. As soon as it is 


dry, the paper is rubbed off with great 
care, leaving behind an inverted 
impression of the characters. Another 
workman now cuts away the blank 
spaces by means of a sharp graver, 
and the block, with the characters in 
high relief, passes to the printer, who 
performs his work by hand. The two 
points that he has to be most careful 
about are to ink the characters equally 
with his brush, and to avoid tearing 
the paper when taking the impression. 
From a good wooden block some 
15,000 copies may be printed, and 
when the characters have been sharp¬ 
ened up a little it is possible to obtain 
8,000 or 10,000 impressions more. 


PRIZE METHOD FOR KEEPING EGGS. 

The Farmer’s Advocate (London, 
Out.,) recently offered a prize for the 
best method of keeping eggs over win¬ 
ter. The receipt given below took the 
prize: u Whatever excludes the air 
prevents the decay of the egg. What 
I have found to be the most successful 
method of doing so is to place a small 
quantity of salt butter in the palm of 
the left hand and turn the egg round 
in it, so that every pore of the shell is 
closed ; then dry sufficient quantity of 
bran in an oven, (be sure you have 
the bran well dried, or it will rust); 
then pack them with the small ends 
down, a layer of bran and another of 
eggs, until your box is full; then place 
in a cool, dry place. If done when 
new laid, they will retain the sweet 
milk and curd of a new laid egg for at 
least eight or ten months. Any oil 
will do, but salt butter never becomes 
rancid, and a very small quantity will 
do. To insure freshness, I rub them 
when gathered in from the nest. Then 
pack them when there is a sufficient 
quantity.’' 










340 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


FECUNDITY OF FISHES. 

It is said that probably about 60,000,- 
000,000 or 70,000,000 codfish are taken 
from the sea annually around the shores 
of Newfoundland. But even that quan¬ 
tity seems small when we consider that 
a single cod yields something like 
3,500,000 eggs each season, and that 
even 8,000,000 have been found in the 
roe of a single cod! A herring six or 
seven ounces in weight, is provided 
with about 30,000,000 ova. After 
making all reasonable allowances for 
the destruction of eggs and of the 
young, it has been calculated that in 
three years a single pair of herrings 
would produce 154,000,000. Buffon said 
that if a pair of herrings were left to 
breed and multiply undisturbed for a 
period of twenty years they would yield 
a fish-bulk equal to our globe. The 
cod far surpasses the herring in fe¬ 
cundity. Were it not that vast num¬ 
bers of the eggs and young are 
destroyed, fish would so multiply as 
to fill all the waters completely. 


CHRONOLOGY OF GAS LIGHTING. 


In 1659, Thomas Shirley communi¬ 
cated to the Royal Society some experi¬ 
ments on the gas issuing from a well 
near Wigan. In 1765, Mr. Spedding 
proposed to the Magistrates of White¬ 
haven to light the streets of the town 
with the above gas, but this proposal 
was refused, though he proved its 
practicability by using it to light his 
own office. In 1792, the first person 
who practically applied coal gas to the 
purpose of artificial illumination was 
William Murdock, who lighted his 
own house and office at Redruth, in 
Cornwall, with gas. In 1798, he 
lighted up part of the Soho Foundry 
at Birmingham. In 1802, gas-light 


was first used in Paris by M. LeBois. 
In 1805, lime was first used in the 
purification of gas, introduced by Mr. 
Clegg. In 1807, Pall Mall was 
lighted with gas by Mr. Winsor. 
In 1810 the London and Westminster 
Gas-light and Coke Company obtained 
their Act of Incorporation. In 1811,, 
the hydraulic main was first used by 
Mr. Clegg. On December 31, 1813, 
Westminster Bridge was lighted with 
gas. The first practical application of 
gas-light in the United States was 
made by David Melville, at Newport, 
Rhode Island. The gas meter was 
invented in 1815 by Mr. Clegg, who 
in 1816 invented the gas-governor. In 
1820, Paris was lighted with gas; 
Boston in 1832 ; New York in 1828 ; 
Philadelphia in 1835 ; Chicago in 
1840; Cincinnati in 1841. David 
Melville, the pioneer of gas-lighting 
in America, died in the year 1856, at 
Newport, Rhode Island, in the 84th 
year of his age. 


RELIGION OF OUR PRESIDENTS. 

The question has been raised 
whether any one of our Presidents 
was a communicant in a Christian 
church. There is a tradition that 
Washington asked permission of a 
Presbyterian minister in New Jersey 
to unite in communion. But it is 
only a tradition. Washington was a 
vestryman in the Episcopal church 
But that office required no more piety 
than it would to be mate of a ship. 
There is no account of his commun¬ 
ing in Boston, or New York or 
Philadelphia, or elsewhere during the 
revolutionary struggle. Adams was a 
member of the parish in Braintree. 
He was High Arian. His attendance 
at worship was not very constant. 
Jefferson was an avowed skeptic, and 










THE PEOPLES* LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


341 


a devout admirer of Doctor Priestly. 
Madison and Monroe were moderate 
churchmen. John Quincy Adams was 
a professed LTnitarian. He attended 
the services in the Representatives* 
Hall during the session of Congress. 
In the afternoon he worshipped in the 
Second Congregational church, where 
he had a pew. When Congress was 
not in session, Mr. Adams usually 
attended in the morning the Unita¬ 
rian church. Jackson was a reveren¬ 
tial hearer. He attended church a 
half-a-day. He paid close attention to 
the sermon, and made a profound bow 
to the pulpit as he retired. He joined 
the Presbyterian church after he left 
office. Yan Buren trained in the 
Dutch Reform School, and attended 
the Episcopal church when he attended 
any. His Sunday afternoons were de¬ 
voted to his political friends. Harrison 
cared very little for religious matters. 
Tyler was loose in regard to Sunday 
and worship. Polk, though not a pro¬ 
fessed Christian, was a regular attend¬ 
ant at public worship, occupying the 
pew next to the one Jackson sat in. 
Colonel Benton occupied the Jackson 
pew and would not give it up. Gen¬ 
eral Taylor seldom went to church. 
Fillmore, more than any other of the 
Presidents, was an open and decided 
Unitarian, giving his influence and 
support to that sect. Pierce was always 
found at church on Sunday mornings. 
He attended the Presbyterian church. 
Buchanan was an Old School Presby¬ 
terian. The building was small, and 
the congregation was both small and 
poor. He was not a very reverential 
worshipper. He seemed wrapped in 
his own thoughts, paying no attention 
apparently to the service, and hurried 
away as if afraid to be addressed. Lin¬ 
coln attended service once a day, and 
always seemed in agony while there. 


His legs were long, and the pews nar¬ 
row, and he often relieved himself by 
putting his feet outside of the door, 
stretching them clear across the aisle. 
His pastor. Dr. Gurley, had the “gift 
of continuance,** and the President 
writhed and squirmed, and gave un¬ 
mistakable evidence of the torture he 
endured. General Grant was a trustee 
in the Methodist church; but that 
office did not imply a professional 
personal consecration. Hayes was a 
member of the Foundry Methodist 
Episcopal church, corner Fourteenth 
and Eighth streets. Garfield attended 
the Christian church on Vermont ave¬ 
nue. Arthur attended the St. John 
Episcopal church, one of the most 
aristocratic societies in the city of 
Washington. Cleveland attended the 
Four-and-a-Half Street Presbyterian 
church. Harrison is a Presbyterian 
and attends the Church of the Cove¬ 
nant, situated at the corner of Con¬ 
necticut avenue and N street. 


SALE OF AUTOGRAPHS. 

At a sale of autographs the follow¬ 
ing prices were paid: For David 
Garrick’s love-letter to Madame Ricko- 
bone, £7 10s., and for one of Defoe’s, 
mentioning his ill-treatment by the 
press, £12 11s. A singularly interest¬ 
ing page of correspondence in the 
hand of Erasmus fetched £16 10s., and 
a humorous note from Burns to Mrs. 
Dunlop, £13, while a song in the 
same hand brought £12. A four-page 
musical manuscript of Bach was sold 
for £16, and a letter of Beethoven for 
£11 10s. A higher price—£22 10s.— 
was realized for one of Goethe’s let¬ 
ters, written in his youth, when 
illness had obliged him to leave the 
university, and he was doubtful about 






342 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


being able to resume liis studies. 
Hogarth’s letter accepting the mem¬ 
bership of the Augsburg Academy 
realized $18 10s.; Mozart’s to the 
Baronne de Waldstettin, £16 10s.; 
one of Rubens, £15 15s.; and a Tasso, 
£18 10s. The letter from Goldsmith 
to Sir Joshua Reynolds, describing 
his miseries on the Continent, £37 
10s. Addison, £24 ; Duke of Bucking¬ 
ham, £10 10s.; Lord Byron, £11.; 
Robert Burns, £60; Catherine of 
Aragon, £43 ; Charles II. of England, 
£6 ; Lord Chesterfield, £5 ; W. Cow- 
per, the poet, £6 12s. 6d.; Cromwell, 
£8 8s.; Queen Elizabeth, £82; James 
II. of Scotland, £22 ; James Stuart, 
£15 10s.; Mary Tudor, £81; Mary 
Stuart, £65; another, £57; John 
Moore, £8 15s.; Lord Nelson, £13; 
Thomas Payne, £5 7s. 6d.; Sir W. 
Raleigh, £33; Sterne, £20; Charles 
Stuart, £70; Wellington, £11 10s.; 
John Wesley, £5 5s.; Cardinal Wol- 
sey, £12 10s.; Sir C. Wren, £10 5s. 


CURIOSITIES OF THE BIBLE. 

These curious facts about the Bible 
were ascertained, it is said, by a con¬ 
vict sentenced to a long term of 
solitary confinement: The Bible con¬ 
tains 3,586,480 letters, 773,692 words, 
31,173 verses, 1,189 chapters, and 66 
books. The word and occurs 46,277 
times. The word Lord occurs 1,855 
times. The word Reverend occurs but 
once, which is in the 9th verse of the 
111th Psalm. The middle verse is the 
8tli verse of the 118th Psalm. The 
21st verse of the 7th chapter of Ezra 
contains all the letters in the alphabet, 
except the letter J. The finest chap¬ 
ter to read is the 26th chapter of the 
Acts of the Apostles. The 19th chap¬ 
ter of II Kings and the 37th chapter 
of Isaiah are alike. The longest verse 


is the 9th verse of the 8th chapter of 
Esther. The shortest verse is the 35th 
verse of the 11th chapter of St. John. 
The 8th, 15th ; 21st and 31st verses of 
the 107th Psalm are alike. Each 
verse of the 136th Psalm end alike. 
There are no words or names of more 
than six syllables. 


HAIL. 

The New York Almanac remarks 
that hail is chiefly restricted to tem¬ 
perate latitudes, and in these is most 
frequent during Spring and Summer. 
Within the tropics it seldom falls at a 
lower altitude than from 1,500 to 
2,000 feet above the level of the sea. 
The explanation usually given of this 
fact is, that the temperature, which 
increases downward to the surface of 
the earth, is constantly so high in 
those regions that hail never descends 
to a lower altitude than that above- 
mentioned without being melted. 

The squall of wind, or whirlwind* 
which accompanies and ushers in the 
hail storm, is no doubt produced by 
the depression of iemperature which 
the hail communicates to the lower 
atmosphere in its descent to the 
ground. 

Hail presents every appearance of 
having frozen during its fall, and not 
like snow of freezing in the form of 
clouds. It has much puzzled meteor¬ 
ologists to show why rain should ever 
get frozen in descending to a lower 
altitude, instead of melting and com¬ 
ing in the shape of rain. A cold 
current of air blowing suddenly in 
the direction of a rain cloud, is under¬ 
stood to be the immediate cause of 
most hail showers. The large size of 
hail stones is attributed to an accumu¬ 
lation during the progress of their 
descent. It is probable that the 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


343 


largest commences with a small nu¬ 
cleus, which receives continued acces¬ 
sions from vapory particles in the 
neighborhood. Accordingly, hail¬ 
stones are found to be smaller on 
the tops of mountains than in the 
neighboring plains and valleys, 
because, not falling so far, they do 
not augment their size by the addi¬ 
tion of successive layers of watery 
vapor. 


PASTE THAT WILL KEEP A YEAR. 

Dissolve a teaspoonful of alum in a 
quart of warm water. When cold, 
stir in as much flour as will give it the 
consistency of thick cream, being par¬ 
ticular to beat up all the lumps; stir 
in as much powdered rosin as will lay 
on a dime, and throw in half a dozen 
cloves to give it a pleasant odor. Have 
on the fire a teacup of boiling water, 
pour the flour mixture into it, stirring 
well all the time. In a few minutes it 
will be the consistency of mush. Pour 
it into an earthen or china vessel; let 
it cool; lay a cover on, and put it in 
a cool place. When needed for use, 
take out a portion and soften it with 
boiling water. Paste thus made will 
last twelve months. It is better than 
gum, as it does not gloss the paper, 
and can be written on. 


MONEY. 


The first mint in the United States 
was put in operation in 1793, and 
from that time until 1857, the whole 
amount of gold coined was valued at 
$481,422,078.70 ; value of silver coin¬ 
age, $107,527,917.53 ; value of copper 
coins, $1,662,823.55 ; making the valu¬ 
ation of the whole coinage $589,612,- 
-819.78. The whole number of pieces 
coined in this time was 623,640,499. 


ASSAFCETIDA. 


This plant is found in the greatest 
abundance in the Persian provinces of 
Khorhassan and Laar, and thence ex¬ 
tends, on the one hand, into the plains 
of Toorkistan, upon the Oxus, where 
it seems to have been met with by Sir 
Alexander Burns, and on the other, 
stretches across from Beloochistan, 
through Caudahar, and other provinces 
of Affghanistan, to the eastern side of 
the valley of the Indus, in Astore. 
Dr. Falconer did not meet with it in 
Cashmere. It is collected in its wild 
state and sent to Cabul and India, 
yielding a good profit to those who 
pick it, as it is used very generally 
throughout the East. 

Although these foetid gums are now 
branded with all sorts of vile names 
for their offensive odor, yet they were 
in high repute among the ancients, 
assafoetida being reckoned one of the 
most agreeable seasonings for food, 
and highly esteemed for its medicinal 
uses, so that it was worth its weight 
in silver. 

A stalk of the plant was sent to the 
Emperor Nero, and yearly to Apollo, 
of Delphos, as more precious than the 
other productions of the earth, inas¬ 
much that “he is worthy of 
silphium,” passed into a proverb — 
silphium being one of the names by 
which it was formerly known. Even 
in the present day, the Persians and 
other Asiatics flavor their food with 
assafoetida, and term it the food of the 
gods. Tastes, we know, differ, for by 
some garlic is highly esteemed, while 
others detest its flavor. Assafoetida 
ranks high in the Materia Medica of 
the Chinese physicians. It forms an 
important article of trade in the East. 
The vessels that carry it to the 
Chinese ports from Bombay, are so 












344 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


imbued with the odor that they spoil 
most other goods. 

The Norwegians use it, with their 
native brandy, as a cure for numerous 
ills ; and many persons in our own 
country carry it about their persons, 
to smell of it frequently, as a pre¬ 
ventive of epileptic fits. 


ALABASTER AND PLASTER PARIS. 

Alabaster is a compact of gypsum, 
and occurs massive, with a compact 
fracture; it is translucent; has a 
glimmering luster, and its colors are 
white, reddish, or yellowish. 

The purest kinds of this material 
are used in Italy for vases, cups, can¬ 
dlesticks, and other ornaments. It is 
found at Castelno, in Tuscany, thirty- 
five miles from Leghorn, at two hun¬ 
dred feet below the surface of the 
earth. 

The yellow variety, called by the 
Italians alabastro agatato, is found at 
Sienna; another variety of a bluish 
color, obtained at Guercieto, is remark¬ 
ably beautiful, being marked with 
variegated shades of purple, blue and 
red. These alabasters are carbonates 
of lime. 

The principal manufactory of alabas¬ 
ter ornaments is at Yalterra, thirty- 
six miles from Leghorn, where about 
five thousand persons live by this kind 
of labor. In making, they require 
great care, and must be preserved 
from dust, as the alabaster is difficult 
to clean. Talcum, commonly called 
French chalk, will remove dirt, but 
the best mode of restoring the color, 
is to bleach the alabaster on a grass 
plat. Gum water is the only cement 
for uniting broken parts. 

Plaster of Paris is likewise a com¬ 
pact gypsum, but contains a small 
portion of carbonic acid, which makes 


it effervesce when treated with acids. 
It was formerly exported only from 
Montmartre, near Paris, hence its 
name; it is much used in ornament¬ 
ing rooms in stucco, in taking im¬ 
pressions of medals, in casting statues, 
busts, vases, time-piece stands, candela- 
bras, obelisks, and for many other pur¬ 
poses. 

The common plaster of Paris is 
ground after being calcined; and in 
this condition it has the property of 
forming a pliable mass with water, 
which soon hardens and assumes the 
consistency of stone. 

Oriental alabaster is not a sulphate 
but a true carbonate of lime, and- on 
account of its peculiar tint and trans¬ 
parency, and as it appears that it was 
formed similar to stalagmite, it was 
called by the ancients alabaster. 


A SIMPLE MICROSCOPE. 

When a sound eye of the average 
power, neither long-sighted nor short¬ 
sighted, examines any object in order 
to see it most distinctly, the observer 
places the object at the distance of 
about six inches, and in this position 
it is seen of its natural size, and is not 
said to be magnified. If we hold up 
at this distance a finger three-fourths 
of an inch broad, it will appear to 
cover upon a wall ten feet distant 
a space of fifteen inches. If we hold 
it up at three inches from the eye, it 
will cover a space of thirty inches, 
and will appear twice as large, and if 
we hold it up at the distance of an 
inch and a half, it will cover a space 
of sixty inches, and will appear four 
times as large. But though magnified 
in these two last positions, it is not 
seen distinctly, and therefore we see 
it more imperfectly than at the dis¬ 
tance of six inches. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


345 


If we look at the finger, when seen 
indistinctly at the distance of three, 
and one and a half inches from the 
eye, through a small pin-hole in a 
piece of card, it will appear not only 
magnified, but tolerably distinct, and 
the distinctness will increase with the 
smallness of the aperture. The most 
satisfactory aperture is one made with 
a needle in a piece of sheet-lead or 
tin-foil, and when the eye is applied 
to it, the vision will be such that 
iiscoveries, invisible to the eye, may 
be made by the observer. 

A single sphere of glass, from the 
twentieth to the fiftieth of an inch 
in diameter, forms a good microscope, 
with which many interesting phenom¬ 
ena may be observed, and even 
important discoveries made. Dr. 
Hooke seems to have been the first 
person who made microscopes of this 
kind. Having taken a clear piece of 
glass, he drew it out by the heat of a 
lamp, into fine threads, and then 
holding the ends of these threads in 
the flame, he melted them till they 
run into a small round globule, which 
hung to the end of the thread. 
The globule is then stuck on the end 
of a piece of wood with the thread 
cut as short as possible, standing 
uppermost, and the ends are ground 
off, first on a whetstone, and then 
polished on a metal plate with tripoli. 
When the glass sphere is thus fin¬ 
ished, it is placed against a small hole 
made in a thin piece of metal, and 
fixed with wax. Thus fitted up it 
will both magnify and make some 
objects look more distinct than many 
of the great microscopes. 

When a microscope cannot be 
obtained for some special purpose, a 
tolerably good extempore one may be 
made by filling with water, or any 
other limpid fluid, two small bottles, 


or test tubes, crossing at right angles, 
and looking at the object to be 
examined through the crossed parts. 


THE TOOLS OF GREAT MEN. 

It is not tools that make the 
workman, but the trained skill and 
perseverance of the man himself. 
Indeed, it is proverbial that the bad 
workman never yet had a good tool. 
Some one asked Opie by what won¬ 
derful process he mixed his colors. 
“ 1 mix them with my brains, sir,” 
was the reply. It is the same with 
every workman who would excel. 
Ferguson made marvelous things, 
such as his wooden clock, that accu¬ 
rately measured the h<3ur—by means 
of a common pen knife—a tool in 
everybody’s hands, but then everybody 
is not a Ferguson. A pan of water 
and two thermometers were the tools 
by which Dr. Black discovered latent 
heat, and a prism, a lens, and a sheet 
of pasteboard, enabled Newton to 
unfold the composition of light and 
the origin of color. An eminent 
foreign savant once called upon Dr. 
Wallaston and requested to be shown 
over his laboratories in which science 
had been enriched by so many impor¬ 
tant discoveries, when the doctor took 
him into a little study, and pointing 
to an old tea tray on the table con¬ 
taining a few watch-glasses, test 
papers, a small balance and a blow¬ 
pipe, said, u There is all the laboratory 
I have!” Stothard learned the art 
of combining colors by closely study¬ 
ing butterflies’ wings. He would 
often say that no one knew what he 
owed to these tiny insects. A burned 
stick and a barn door served Wilkie 
in lieu of a pencil and canvas. 
Bewick first practiced drawing on the 
cottage walls of his native village, 







346 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


which he covered with his sketches 
in chalk; and Benjamin West made 
his first brushes out of the cat’s tail. 
Ferguson laid down in the fields at 
night in a blanket, and made a map 
of the heavenly bodies by means of 
a thread with small beads on it, 
stretched between his eye and the 
stars. Franklin first robbed the 
thunder-cloud of its ligntnmg by 
means of a kite made with two cross 
sticks and a handkerchief Watt 
made his first model ot the condens¬ 
ing steam engine out oi an old 
anatomist’s syringe, used to inject 
the arteries previous to dissection. 
Clifford worked his first problem in 
mathematics when a cobler’s appren¬ 
tice, upon scraps of leather, which he 
beat smooth for the purpose; while 
Rittenhouse, the great astronomer, 
first calculated eclipses on his plow. 

GRINDSTONES. 

Where They Come From and how They 
are Made. 

The sandstone formation overlaying 
the coal beds of England furnishes the 
grindstones of that country, the prin¬ 
cipal quarries being located at New¬ 
castle-upon-Tyne, and at Wickersly, 
near Sheffield. 

These quarries are worked by hand, 
and all the grindstones are made with 
mallet and chisel, and have been 
imported into this country for over 
100 years. 

The grindstones from the provinces 
of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick 
are also the overlaying sandstone 
formations of the coal districts bor¬ 
dering on the Bay of Fundy, and 
extending across the provinces to the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence. These immense 
deposits contain a great variety of 
grits, known as the Nova Scotia 


grindstones. These quarries are gen¬ 
erally worked by the French people,, 
known as “Acadians,” from the name 
they gave their country, “Acadia,” 
who are the descendants of the 
Huguenots, who were driven out of 
France by religious persecution. 

They are a very industrious and sim¬ 
ple-minded people, and the females 
retain to this day the style of dress 
brought over from France by their 
ancestors. 

The tides of the Bay of Fundy rise 
and fall from 60 to Y0 feet every 12 
hours, and these people avail them¬ 
selves of this power to work the 
quarries, which extend from a high 
bluff on the mainland, down to low 
water mark in the bay. 

At low water a huge mass of stone 
is loosened trom its bed, and a heavy 
chain is passed under it and around a 
large boat which is placed alongside. 
As the tide rises, the stone attached to 
the bottom oi the boat is floated into 
a sand cove at high water, and made 
into grindstones after the tide recedes. 
This work is done with mallet and 
chisel, the rough parts being first 
chopped off with a heavy axe. Ma¬ 
chinery has been recently introduced, 
and the small grindstones are now 
turned in a lathe by steam power. 

The sandstone deposits of this 
country which are made into grind¬ 
stones are found along the shores of 
Lake Erie, and extending ror a con¬ 
siderable distance east and west of 
Cleveland, and inland as far as Mari¬ 
etta. on the Ohio. They are also 
found on the shores of Lake Huron,, 
above Detroit. 

The blocks of stone are roughly 
hewn out, with a square hole in the 
center. This is placed on a heavy 
square iron shaft furnished with a 
9-inch collar, against which the stone 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


347 


is securely fastened by means of an¬ 
other collar keyed against the side ot 
the stone. The shaft and stone being 
driven by steam power, two men on 
opposite sides turn it oh perfectly 
true, by means of soft iron bars about 
six feet long and two by one-half inch 
thick, which are drawn out to a thin 
point, which is curved upward. 


CHARLES GOODYEAR; 

The name of this great inventor has 
been familiar to the public for many 
years; yet few out of the circle of his 
immediate friends have known the 
story of a life so full of the strangest 
vicissitudes, ennobled by such a self- 
sacrificing and never-tiring devotion to 
one object, but saddened by so many 
sorrows that it sounds like a romance 
as well as a reality. He lived, indeed, 
to see his bright dreams realized ; he 
lived to see the almost worthless gum, 
with which the savages of Central 
Africa smeared their bodies, as a pro¬ 
tection from insects, become a staple 
of commerce, employing for its trans¬ 
port ships in every sea, giving 
employment to thousands of workmen 
and millions of capital, and entering 
into the arts, the sciences, the daily 
uses, and the mechanical industries of 
the highest civilized life. The man 
who accomplished all this, has not 
lived without purpose or in vain, yet 
it is impossible to give any complete 
idea of the price which was paid for 
these great results — the long toil, the 
suffering so cheerfully endured, the 
privations which none but a son of 
genius, living on his dreams, could 
have borne, the failures, the disap¬ 
pointments, the mortification and the 
success which came at last, so late that 
it was no longer worth wishing for. 

The most striking point in Mr. 


Goodyear’s character was hi 4 * sunny 
and cheerful disposition. He lived a 
life of constant struggle, he was 
involved in long and painful lawsuits 
with those who pirated his inventions, 
he was necessarily brought in collision 
with many who were connected with 
him, or opposed to him in business ; 
many lost money by the connection ; 
but such was the impression made by 
this simple-minded and enthusiastic 
dreamer that, at the hour of his death, 
he had no enemy living. His gener¬ 
osity, his animated and affectionate 
nature, his earnestness and enthusiasm 
made him friends everywhere, and he 
was fortunate, far beyond the usual lot 
of men, in exciting neither hatred, O'* 
envy, or malice. 

We presume that the story of this 
eventful life will be made public in 
some more formal mode by the friends 
of his family, and we will not attempt 
to fully trace the progress of his in¬ 
ventions. It was in 1834 that Mr. 
Goodyear turned his attention to the 
manufacture of India rubber. There 
was a mystery about this tropical gum 
which gave it a strange charm in his 
imagination. It was not an article of 
commerce, but appeared, from time to 
time, only as a rare curiosity, brought 
from foreign lands. The savages who 
possessed it kept the mode of its manu¬ 
facture a profound secret. It was 
found only under the burning sun of 
the equator, in the gloomy swamps of 
the unexplored Amazon, or the jungles 
of Asia and Africa. Its nature was as 
mysterious as its origin, the chemists 
who examined it were battled in their 
attempts to make it of practical use. 
Ingenious men, abroad and at home, 
had attempted to solve the mystery, 
but all had failed. That it was of 
immense value in the arts, to supply a 
thousand wants of civilized life, was 







348 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


obvious to all, but the elastic gum 
£ept its own mysterious secret, and 
there was no clue to the discovery. 

To discover the secret and solve the 
problem became the dream of Charles 
Goodyear’s life. The ditncuities and 
failures which he encountered only 
made it more dear to him. He asked 
aid irom men of science, but they dis¬ 
couraged him; his associates aban¬ 
doned the pursuit in despair; his 
friends one after another left him, but 
he only clung the closer to his cher¬ 
ished faith. In one of the contests by 
which pirates of his invention sought 
to rob him of his rights, the veil was 
half withdrawn from the lire of the 
inventor, and a few details of the 
privations which he endured were 
given. He was in such extreme penury 
that his bed was sold from under him ; 
he was so poor that it was said he 
could not buy an ounce of tea on 
credit. In the dead of Winter there 
was no food in his house, and no fuel 
for fire. This was not the struggle of 
a few months only, but it was the 
story of years, for it was not till 1844, 
after ten years of toil, that he per¬ 
fected and patented his discovery. His 
labor, however, did not cease, and even 
to the hour of his death he was de¬ 
voted to his favorite pursuit, upon 
which he lavished the immense sums 
which he received from his patents. 
His life was subject to the strangest 
vicissitudes. He went from a poor 
debtors’ prison to a palace in Paris. 
The man who was an object of con¬ 
tempt in an obscure village, on account 
of his poverty, received the Grand 
Cross of the Legend of Honor from 
the Emperor Napoleon, as a reward 
of his genius. In Europe, as well as 
America, his name was honored and 
his merits appreciated. 


ENGRAVING. 


Engraving was practiced at a very 
early age by the Egyptians, who used 
wooden stamps, marked with hiero¬ 
glyphics, for the purpose of marking 
their bricks. It was first mentioned 
B. C. 1491, by Moses (Exodus xxviii, 9), 
who was commanded to take two 
onyx stones and grave on them the 
names of the children of Israel. Its 
revival in Europe dates from the 
fifteenth century. Mezzotint engrav¬ 
ing was invented by Col. von Siegen 
about 1643 ; engraving in colors by 
J. C. Le Blond, about 1725 ; in imita¬ 
tion of pencil by Gilles des Marteaux, 
in 1756; and aquatint engraving by 
Le Prince, about 1762. Engraving 
on copper, or chalcography, is said to 
have been practiced in Germany about 
1450. Some early plates by Albert 
Durer, dated 1515, 1516, are believed 
to be impressions from steel plates. 
This metal, however, was very seldom 
employed by engravers, only one speci¬ 
men, executed by Mr. J. I. Smith, in 
1805, being known until 1818, when 
Mr. C. Warren exhibited an impres¬ 
sion from a soft steel plate to the 
Society of Arts. Engraving on wood 
is said to have been practiced by the 
Chinese as early as B. C. 1120. The 
precise date of its introduction 
into Europe is unknown. Some 
authorities state that a series of wood- 
cuts, illustrative of the career of Alex¬ 
ander the Great, was engraved by the 
two Cunio, in 1285. Tnis story is, 
however, rather doubtful; and perhaps 
the origin of the art may be traced to 
the wooden blocks used by notaries for 
stamping monograms, in the thir¬ 
teenth century, and to the engraved 
playing-cards which appeared in 
France about 1340. The earliest 
wood-cut in existence represents St. 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


349 


Christopher with the intant Savior, 
and is dated 1423. Many block books 
exist of about the year 1430; but the 
art was not brought to great perfec¬ 
tion till the commencement of the 
sixteenth century. Albert Durer 
(IdTl —1528); Lucas, of Leyden (1494 
—1533); Holbein, whose Dance of 
Death appeared at Lyons in 1538; 
Gerard Audran (1640 —1703); Woollet 
(1735 —1785); Thomas Bewick (1753 
—1828); Nesbit, born in 1775 ; and 
Harvey, born in 1796, rank foremost 
among the old school of engravers; 
but the modern school, stimulated and 
encouraged by the growing taste of 
the public for finely illustrated books 
and periodicals, may be said to have 
completely surpassed all their prede¬ 
cessors. 


THE FIRST AMERICAN ENGRAYER. 

Mr. Nathaniel Hurd was undoubt¬ 
edly the first American engraver. Mr. 
Hurd was born in Boston, Mass. In 
Buckingham's New England Maga¬ 
zine appeared a series of articles on 
“Early American artists and Mechan¬ 
ics,” the first number of which (Vol. 
3, July, 1832,) was devoted to an 
account of Mr. Hurd, accompanied 
with a portrait. This writer says: 
u Among our seal cutters and die 
engravers, and engravers on copper, 
was Nathaniel Hurd. His grandfather 
came from England, and settled in 
Charlestown. He died in that town 
in 1749, aged 70. His son Jacob 
married the only daughter of John 
Mason, of Kingston, in the Island of 
Jamaica, and died in the year 1758. 
He was the father of Nathaniel Hurd, 
who is the prominent subject of this 
memoir.” 

Hurd was a real genius. To a supe¬ 
rior mode of execution he added a 


Hogarthian talent of character and 
humor. Among other tnings of his, 
he engraved a descriptive representa¬ 
tion of a certain swindler and forger 
of bills, named Hudson, a foreigner, 
standing in the pillory. In the crowd 
of spectators, he introduced the like¬ 
nesses of some well-known characters, 
which excited much good-natured 
mirth. The following is an entertain¬ 
ing account of this print: 

“ In the year 1672 there appeared 
in Boston a curious character, who 
called himself Doctor Hudson. He 
gave out that he was a Dutchman ; 
that he was possessed of a large 
fortune, and that he was traveling 
for his amusement. He was dressed 
very gaily, tried to push himself into 
genteel company, and, though rather 
expensive in his appearance, he 
showed but little money and displayed 
no resources. He was well watched. 
After some time, a fellow was detected 
in putting off a note purporting to be 
from the Treasurer of the Province, 
which proved a counterfeit. His name 
was Howe; he confessed he was a 
partner in villiany with Dr. Hudson* 
and that they had been privately 
engaged in making up a number of 
the Province notes, which were in 
high credit in this and the neighbor¬ 
ing provinces, and sold readily at an 
advanced price. The doctor was also 
taken into custody. They were tried 
and convicted; Hudson was ordered 
to the pillory, and Howe to the whip¬ 
ping post. The execution of their 
sentence was accompanied by the 
collection of an immense crowd, and 
immoderate exultation. 

“ Hurd immediately put out a cari¬ 
cature print of the exhibition, which 
excited much attention. Hudson was 
represented in the pillory, and at a 
short distance was Howe, stripping 








350 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


near the whipping post. The devil 
is represented flying towards the 
doctor, exclaiming, 1 This is the man 
for me. 1 In front of the print is the 
representation of a medallion, on 
which is a profile of Hudson, dressed 
in a bag-wig, with a sword under his 
arm (as he generally appeared before 
his detection), partly drawn from the 
scabbard, with the words 1 Dutch 
Tuck 1 on the exposed part of the 
blade. Round the edge is 4 The true 
profile of tli£ notorious Doctor Seth 
Hudson, 1762. 1 

44 In an obituary notice of Mr. Amos 
Doolittle, of New Haven, Conn., pub¬ 
lished in Silliman’s Journal of 
Science and Arts , April, 1832, it is 
claimed that he was 4 the first person 
who engraved on copper in this 
country. 1 This notice states that his 
first attempt was a print of the battle 
of Lexington, after a drawing by Earl, 
in 1775, which was only two years 
prior to the death of Mr. Hurd, as will 
be seen by the above date, eleven years 
subsequent to the likeness of Dr. 
SewalL Paul Revere also engraved on 
copper some time before the earliest 
date claimed for Mr. Doolittle. There 
is a copy of a print engraved by Paul 
Revere, in the Redwood Library, New¬ 
port, R. I., representing the massacre 
of citizens in Boston, on the 5th of 
March, 1770, which was issued the 
same year. 

44 In the art of line engraving, Mr. 
Hurd was his own instructor, and had 
he lived to a more advanced age, would 
doubtless have distinguished himself 
yet more in an art, in the exercise of 
which it is evident he took great 
delight, and for which, it is equally 
manifest, he possessed both taste and 
talent. He died 17th December, 1777, 
and was buried in the old 1 Granary 
Burial Ground, 1 in Boston. 11 


THE WASTING OF COINS. 

It is stated by an eminent English 
authority that the life of coins is 
much briefer now than before the in¬ 
troduction of steam for passenger 
travei. This is attributed to the 
almost constant attrition to which 
they are subjected by being carried 
about, and the constant passage of 
them from hand to hand. The au¬ 
thority we quote states that it takes 
on an average a hundred old shillings 
to make eighty new ones. This is a 
fearful waste, and as we expect some 
time to see gold and silver again a 
common medium of exchange in this 
country, it is of some importance to 
ascertain a remedy for the deteriora¬ 
tion of coins. With copper and 
bronze coins, it may be of no conse¬ 
quence, as they never bear intrinsically 
the value which they nominally pos¬ 
sess, so that there is really no actual 
loss from wear. Gold and silver coins, 
however, are really worth their face or 
nominal value. 


LOOKING-GLASSES SPOILED BY SUN¬ 
SHINE. 


The Industrial Monthly says it does 
not seem to be generallv understood 
that the amalgam of tin foil with 
mercury which is spread on glass 
plates to make looking-glasses, is very 
readily crystalized by actinic solar 
rays. A mirror hung where the sun 
can shine on it is usually spoiled; it 
takes a granulated appearance familiar 
to house-keepers, though they may 
not be acquainted with the' cause of 
the change. In such a state the arti¬ 
cle is nearly worthless, the continuity 
of the surface is destroyed, and it will 
not reflect outlines with any approach 
to precision. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


351 


WHITE LEAH. 


The manufacture of White Lead was 
the discovery of the Dutch a long time 
ago, and though many attempts have 
been made to shorten and improve the 
process, owing to certain natural limi¬ 
tations, it has never been essentiallv 
changed where the production of the 
best article was required. This process 
probably varies somewhat in detail in 
different establishments, but yet it re¬ 
mains substantially the same as at first 
introduced. It requires the purest me- 
talic Dad, which is either cut or cast 
into such forms as to present the larg¬ 
est surface to the action of the acid. 
Formerly it was cut into spiral coils, 
perhaps a quarter of an inch thick, and 
of such size as to fit into the top of 
small earthen vessels like a flower pot. 
Lately it is more generally cast into 
very thin grates or buckles, five or six 
of which are laid within the pot upon 
a small projection made to receive 
them. In the bottom of the pot, but 
so as not to touch the lead, is a small 
quantity of acetic acid or vinegar. Pots 
thus prepared are placed in rows upon 
a convenient area, perhaps twenty or 
twenty-five feet square; a bed of spent 
tan bark a foot thick, it may be, being 
spread beneath them. When the area 
has been covered by rows of pots, thin 
sheets or strips of lead are laid upon 
the top; a small piece, however, being 
either broken out of the edge of each 
pot, or left out in making it, so as to 
give a free circulation of air or gas from 
one to another of the whole number. 
Over these rows, as thus arranged, is 
now placed a covering of planks, on 
which is spread another bed of tan, and 
upon it arranged another series of pots 
just like the former. And so, layer 
after layer, is built up a “stack” some 
twenty-five feet high, the sides of which 


are held in place by a frame and plank¬ 
ing. The stack has not been long com¬ 
pleted before the tan begins to “heat,” 
and the fermentation raises the temper¬ 
ature within, to 140 degrees or more, 
and so turns the acetic acid within the 
pots into vapor. This rises and attacks 
the strips of lead which have already 
began to oxidize; and thus is formed 
the thin film of another compound 
called the subacetate of lead. But the 
fermentation of the tan has by this 
time begun to give out freely carbonic 
acid , which, reaching the subacetate, 
draws to itself the fine particles of lead 
which it contains, and so leaves the 
acid free to attack the metalic lead be¬ 
neath, as it did before. This simple 
chemical process goes on for three 
months or more, till the power of the 
tan is exhausted, so that it can no 
longer keep up the fermentation when 
the stack is taken down, and a most 
wonderful change is found to have 
taken place within the pots. The strips 
of lead retain their form indeed, some¬ 
what increased in size, but they are 
changed in color to a most beautiful 
white. The surface crumbles freely, 
and the fragments are rubbed without 
difficulty, to the finest powder. This 
transformation in some cases has gone 
all through the original metal; but in 
others a core is left of blue metal which 
has not been changed. The difference 
found to exist will depend on various 
circumstances, such as moisture of the 
atmosphere, temperature, position in 
the stack, strength of the tan, &c. If 
these cores exist, however, the next 
process is to separate them, and reduce 
the “white lead” to fine powder. This 
is accomplished in some establishments 
by passing the pieces of carbonate, as 
taken from the pots, between rollers; 
in others, by breaking them by other 
means and, in any case, screening away 






352 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the “bluelead;” after which the “white 
lead” is ground in water between mill 
stones, the process being repeated till 
the paste is as line as it is possible to 
be made. The remainder of the pro¬ 
cess consists in evaporating the water; 
which is done in many establishments 
in large copper pans having two bot¬ 
toms, between which the exhaust steam 
from the engine is passed. Others have 
different arrangements; but, however 
accomplished, when the drying is com¬ 
plete, the powder is ready to be packed 
for the market. 

The grinding of paints in oil is a 
distinct process, and is carried on main¬ 
ly by a different class of manufacturers. 


THE MOON’S INFLUENCE ON MAN 
AND PLANTS. 


The influence of the moon is 
admitted by all medical men practic¬ 
ing in India. From infancy the 
natives of tropical climates are taught 
to believe in lunar influence, and that 
with good cause, for the intimate 
connection which exists between the 
new and full moon, the disturbed state 
of the atmosphere, and the attacks 
of epidemic has been well ascertained. 
Two hundred years ago, a physician 
named Diemerbroeck wrote a treatise 
on the Plague, in which he says: 
u Two or three days before and after 
the full moon the disease was more 
violent; more persons were seized at 
these times than at others.” Many 
other authorities could be quoted to 
prove that the moon’s influence is not 
to be regarded as purely imaginary, as 
is commonly the case. Many curious 
facts are recorded concerning the 
moon’s influence upon the vegetable 
kingdom. It is stated that if peas 
are sown when the moon is increasing, 
they never cease to bloom ; that if 


fruits and herbs are set during the 
wane of the moon, they are not so 
rich in flavor nor so strong and 
healthy as when planted during the 
increase. In Brazil, the farmers plant 
during the decline of the moon all 
those vegetables whose roots are used 
as food; and, on the contrary, they 
plant during the increase of the moon 
the sugar-cane, maize, rice, etc. The 
English gardeners observe similar rules 
in regard to grafting, pruning, etc. 
From observations of Mr. Howard it 
appears that northerly winds are most 
frequent during a full moon, and 
south-west winds blow chiefly at the 
time of the new moon. It is also 
remarkable that rain falls most fre¬ 
quently during the last quarter of 
the moon, and that not a twentieth 
part of the rains of the whole year 
falls at full moon.— 


RICH MEN OF OLD. 

The rich men of olden times 
eclipsed the rich men of this age as 
the rich men of to-day the simpler 
fortunes of their ancestors in America. 
Men talk of ten, twentjq forty, fifty 
and sixty millions in the United 
States, as if the like had never been 
before. But what are the big facts 
and figures as we read them ? Why, 
to give them in a heap of riches, that 
Ptolemus Philadelphus, in Egypt, had 
a fortune of $350,000,000 ; that Cleo¬ 
patra drank a glass of wine in which 
was dissolved a pearl worth $40,000; 
that Cicero paid $5,000,000 for a coun¬ 
try seat; that Messella paid $2,000,- 
000 for a homestead ; that Seneca 
owed $12,000,000, and Tiberius $12,— 
000,000; that Julius Caesar owed 
$14,000,000 before he got an office; 
that Marcus Antonius ran in debt 
$1,500,000 for his election, and, what 









353 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


is more odd, paid it off, and afterwards 
cleared $720,000,000. iEsop, the poet- 
slave, paid $400,000 for one single 
party, and Caligula paid as much for 
a supper, and drank old wines worth 
$20 an ounce, and roasted pigs over 
fires made of nuts and raisins. The 
bedsteads of Heliogabalus were of 
pure silver and gold, and $80,000 were 
necessary to keep up the dignity of a 
Roman Senator. The capacity of a 
Roman theatre was fabulous, while 
the wooden theatre of Sharurus had 
80,000 seats, the Coliseum 87,000, 
with 22,000 standing places, and the 
Circus Maximus room for 386,000 spec¬ 
tators. Even in the fifth century, 
after Rome was plundered by Ger¬ 
mans and Vandals, Zacharius reports 
from Rome 384 streets, 80 golden 
statues, 56,557 palaces, 13,051 foun¬ 
tains, 2,785 bronze statues of Emper¬ 
ors and officers, 21 colossal horse 
statues, 41 theatres, 2,300 perfumery 
stores, and 2,291 prisons. Then, for 
taxes, the Thebans paid for income 
duty, in one year, $6,000,000, while 
Alexander had a library of 700,000 
volumes, at a time even when manu¬ 
scripts were costly, and Athens had 
the theatre of Bacchus, holding 30,000 
people. 

In the face of such figures, even 
London and Paris, and much more, 
New York, will readily cease boasting 
of their rich men, big places, and 
vast proportions. But the moral is, 
what vanity and what folly ! Even 
our biggest public robbers will have 
to stand back in the face of such a 
plunderer as Marcus Antonius. There 
were Roman Senators who spent 
$80,000 a year. Modern wealth, com¬ 
pared with the ancient article, is like 
a drop to the ocean, or as a single 
pebble or shell on the sea-shore. 


DEATHS BY WAR. 


All speak of the horrors of wa , 
yet very few can comprehend its dire 
ravages in the human family. M. 
Camille Hammarion, a French savan, 
has undertaken the task of arriving at 
an approximate estimate of the de¬ 
struction of life since the siege of 
Troy — that is, during the last 3,000 
years — and conies to the conclusion 
that in this long period mankind has 
not enjoyed a single year of peace. 
Referring to the last hundred years — 
from 1771 to 1871 — this writer gives 
the following alarming figures : 

During the period of the war of 
American Independence, 1778 to 1783, 
there were destroyed 400,000 lives. 
The wars of the French Republic, 
from 1791 to 1800, cost France 1,800,- 
000 lives, and other nations 2,500,000. 
The wars of Napoleon under the Em¬ 
pire cost France 2,600,000, and the 
other nations 3,500,000 lives. Since 
1815, France has engaged in thirteen 
wars — in Spain in 1823, in Greece in 
1827, in Algiers and Belgium and St. 
Juan d’Ulla in 1830, and in Rome in 
1849; and then come the wars in the 
Crimea, Italy, Syria, China, Cochin 
China and Mexico. These wars swal¬ 
lowed up more than 2,500,000 lives. 
Prussia has lost within the last hun¬ 
dred years 600,000; England 1,000,- 
000; Russia, not including the losses 
sustained in the wars against France, 
1,100,000 ; Turkey, Persia, and Greece, 
1,500,000; Italy, 800,000; Austria, 
outside of the wars with the above- 
mentioned nations, 150,000; Spain, 
450,000; the American Colonies, 500,- 
000; Portugal, 110,000; the wars of 
the United States within the present 
century, 1,200,000. Grand total of 
the lives destroyed by the wars of civi¬ 
lized nations during the last hundred 









354 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


years, 19,340,000. Including the wars 
of all nations, civilized and barbarous, 
the minimum loss per century is 40,- 
000,000, or more than the present 
population of the United States. 


ANCIENT OEMS. 

From the earliest ages of which 
any records have been preserved, the 
love of gems and jewels of every kind 
has been prevalent. Among all 
nations, and in every class of society, 
this taste has been shared alike by the 
cultivated and the ignorant. In the 
East, wealth was estimated by the 
number of ornaments and precious 
stones a man possessed. Gems formed 
a prominent part in the decoration of 
the ancient Mosaic priesthood; and 
we find twelve precious stones glit¬ 
tered in the breast-plate of the Pontiff 
of the old law; and the Pope, when 
celebrating a high mass, always uses a 
formal, or fine silver plate richly gilt, 
embossed with a passage from the 
eighth chapter of Daniel, with clouds 
wreathing about the figures of 
attending cherubim, with circles of 
precious stones surrounding the 
whole, one larger and more beautiful 
than the others in the centre. Pius 
VI. had a splendid ornament of this 
description, of pure gold, with a rich 
olive branch of the same metal, of 
enameled green, with a knob set with 
the finest Orient pearls; but it dis¬ 
appeared after the arrest of the Pon¬ 
tiff, and its fate was never known. 

Gems were also used by the writers 
and poets as similes and figures, in 
the Talmud. It is asserted that Noah 
had no other light than that furnished 
by diamonds. Some have suffered 
exile, torture, and death itself, rather 
than reveal the hiding-places of their 
cherished treasures. Nonius, a Roman 


Senator, who owned an opal valued 
at 185,000, preferred proscription 
rather than surrender the coveted 
trinket. They also afford an elegant 
floating investment; and many illus¬ 
trious persons, who have been driven 
by political reasons to quit their 
native land, have been indebted to 
their jewels for subsistence. The 
Prince Palatine, after he had lost the 
battle of Prague, fled to Holland, with 
over a million on his person in rare 
and costly gems. Many of the refu¬ 
gees who sought an asylum in the 
United States from France and St. 
Domingo, brought with them consid¬ 
erable resources in this way. 


TIME DEVOTED TO MEALS. 

Dr. Derby states that the average 
time occupied in the process of taking 
food by the people of Massachusetts 
does not exceed from twelve to fifteen 
minutes for each meal. Such haste is 
injurious to health for many reasons. 
The process of digestion begins in the 
mouth with the action of the teeth, 
and through excitement of the sali¬ 
vary glands by the presence of food. 
Unless saliva is abundantly mingled 
with the latter, the first act of diges¬ 
tion is obstructed, and Nature’s plan 
is changed. This fluid not only lubri¬ 
cates, but acts chemically in the 
mouth, if a reasonable time be given 
it, upon all the starchy elements 
which make up the great bulk of what 
we eat. Eating in haste, a great deal 
of air is swallowed. Air is to a certain 
extent always entangled in the saliva, 
and assists the digestion, but when 
“wads” of food succeed each other 
very rapidly, they seem to act like 
pistons in the tube leading from the 
back of the throat, and drive before and 
between them into the stomach such 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


355 


amounts of air as to distend that 
organ and impede its functions. An¬ 
other effect of eating in this way is 
that the masses of food, imperfectly 
mixed with saliva, become impacted in 
the esophagus, checking its muscular 
action, which is obviously intended to 
propel only one piece at a time. This 
embarrassment is overcome by taking 
at one gulp as much fluid as the 
mouth will hold, thus distending the 
elastic tube, and washing the obstruct¬ 
ed food into the stomach. All this is 
unnatural, and can hardly fail to work 
mischief. 


AGES OF EMINENT MEN. 


When they Achieved Success in Life. 

Admiral Blake fought his great 
naval battles at 55 and 57. 

Muller had written many of his 
works before the age of 30. 

Wheatstone at 35 had invented a 
kind of telegraph. 

Dalton, between 34 and 37, made 
his discoveries in the atomic theory. 

MacDonough was but 28 when he 
gained the victory of Lake Champlain. 

Hogarth was famous at 32, and 
retained his fame to the last. He 
died at 62. 

Alva was successful in the Nether¬ 
lands at 19, and at 24 fought well in 
Portugal. 

Mazari early entered diplomacy; at 
41 was prime minister, and at 59 died. 

Ziska organized his armies and 
gained his great victory about 40, and 
died at 45. 

Codova at 17 was famous; at 41 
was commander-in-chief of the army 
of Italy. 

Wren laid the corner stone of St. 
Paul’s at 43; when he died at 91 it 
was not completed. 


Kaulback was 40 when he was 
appointed to the task of decorating 
the museum of Berlin. 

At the earliest age possible, 24, Sir 
Edwin Landseer was elected member 
of the Academy. 

Grove at 31 set forth his views on 
the correlation of forces, and at 41 
was Queen's counsel. 

Thorwaldsen became famous at 33 
by his statue of Jason, and at 50 pro¬ 
duced “ Christ and His Apostles.” 

Frederick William, of Prussia, began 
his reign at 25, and ruled twenty-seven 
years, until he was 52. 

Warren Hastings was a precocious 
youth ; at 44 was Governor-General of 
India, and at 54 retired. 

Radetzky at the advanced age of 83 
conducted the campaign in Italy; at 
90 retired from the service. 

Napier began his reform in India at 
the age of 59; gained a great victory 
at 61, and at 62 returned to England. 

Yon Moltke at between 66 and 70 
directed the operations of the great 
wars of Prussia against Austria and 
France. 

Titian, who flourished later than 
most artists, began to be original at 
35, and at 82 executed two of his 
greatest paintings. 

Gengis Kahn became ruler at 13; 
at once raised an army of 30,000 men, 
was victorious, and at 40 he was Em¬ 
peror and mogul. 

Crawford was famous at 25; exe¬ 
cuted sixty important works and fifty 
sketches, and was doing his greatest 
work at 43, when he died. 

Adams, the English astronomer, 
discovered Neptune at 27; and Lever- 
rier, who made the discovery at the 
same time, was also young. 

Nelson at 39 was distinguished at 
the battle of St. Vincent, and was 
knighted and made Rear Admiral. By 








356 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the age of 40 he had been actually 
and personally engaged with the 
enemy one hundred and twenty times, 
and had gained the “ Battle of the 
Nile ; ” and was 47 at Trafalgar, where 
he was killed in action. 

Rumford, at 32, was a very success¬ 
ful administrator in Bavaria; at 45 he 
published the experiments on which 
he had been engaged — on heat, etc. 

Helmholtz at 23 presented his views 
on the correlation of forces; at 30 
invented the opthalmoscope, and at 38 
was professor at Konigsberg. 

Madison between 30 and 35 wrote 
his papers in the Federalist . At 49 
presented his ablest State paper. In 
his old age he opposed the war of 
1812. 

Hannibal was high in command at 
18; a very distinguished General at 
26 ; and at 31 fought the great battle 
of Cannae, and the second Punic war 
at 46. 

Charlemagne was King at 26; con¬ 
quered Agincourt at 28 ; was master 
of France and most of Germany at 
29; was master of Italy at 32, and of 
Spain at 36. 

Tyndall at 32 was a Fellow of the 
Royal Society ; at 33 was professor in 
the Royal Institution ; at 43 published 
his u Heat as a Means of Motion.” 

Darwin published his “ Origin of 
Species,” which represented the labor 
of twenty years, at 50; it may there¬ 
fore be said to have been composed 
between 30 and 50. 

Mayer at 27 published his first paper 
on u Forces of Inorganic Nature,” at 
31 another paper, and at 34 and 62 
still other papers bearing on the same 
theme. 

Julius Cassar at 21 distinguished 
himself on the sea, and soon after 
held the office of tribune, quaestor and 
edile. Before 40 he had completed 


the war in Spain, and was consul. 
Before 45 he had twice crossed the 
Rhine, had conquered Gaul; had 
twice passed to Britain; at 52 he 
had won Pharsalia and had supreme 
power; he died at 56, u the victor of 
five hundred battles f and the conqueror 
of a thousand cities.” 

Gall as a boy began his study of 
phrenology. After twenty years’ 
study he, at 33, published a work, and 
at 38 began his career as a lecturer. 
At 42 Spurzheim became a convert. 

Fouche at 29 was conspicuous in 
the French Convention of 1789. At- 
32 was driven from the Convention ; 
from 37 to 47 he was the Napoleon of 
Jesuitical diplomacy. 

Selden at 23 became an author and 
in repute ; at 28 and 35 published sev¬ 
eral important works, and at 56 en¬ 
tered Parliament, where his influence 
was on the side of moderation. 

Benjamin West, extraordinarily pre¬ 
cocious, was a great painter, at 30, 
and was a young man when he 
produced “ The Death of Wolfe,” that 
wrought a revolution in painting. 

Esquirol at 22 founded the lunatic 
asylum that became the model for all 
France, and at 45 made a great repu¬ 
tation by a course of lectures on the 
subject of the treatment of the insane. 

Gustavus Adolphus, one of the 
greatest as well as one of the best 
men who ever wore a crown, succeeded 
to the throne of Sweden at 12; be¬ 
came famous in war before 20, and 
fell in battle at 38. 

Monroe in the war of the Revolu¬ 
tion distinguished himself when be¬ 
tween 20 and 25 ; at 25 was a member 
of Congress. At 58 was chosen Presi¬ 
dent. At 35 was Minister to France, 
and retired at 66. 

Huxley at 29 was professor in the 
Royal School of Mines; at 30 had 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


357 


published “Man’s Place in Nature,” 
and had distinguished himself in the 
scientific world by his successful con¬ 
troversy with Prof. Owen. He was 
44 when he published his remarkable 
essay, entitled, u The Physical Basis of 
Life.” 

John Jay rose very rapidly in his 
profession; at 23 was a very promi¬ 
nent lawyer in New York; at 30 was 
a conspicuous member of the Conti¬ 
nental Congress, and wrote the 
address to the people of Great Britain. 
At 32 he drafted the Constitution of 
New York, and was appointed Chief 
Justice of the State. At 33 he was 
president of the Continental Congress. 
At 37 he, with Adams and Laurens, 
signed the treaty of peace. At 44 he 
was appointed Chief Justice. At 56 
he retired from public life, having 
done more and better in a great 
national crisis than almost any other 
man of public history. The last 30 
years of his life were comparatively 
inactive. 


SIMPLE TIMBER PRESERVATIVE. 

To render posts of timber, placed in 
the ground, practically impervious to 
moisture and for a long time prevent 
decay, the following simple recipe has 
been tried, and found to answer the 
purpose excellently. For fence or 
gate posts, it is particularly recom¬ 
mended. Take linseed oil, boil it and 
mix it with charcoal dust unt-il the 
mixture has the consistency of an 
ordinary paint. Give the posts a single 
coat of the mixture, or paint, before 
planting them, and no farmer, says 
one who has used it, living to the age 
of the patriarchs of old, will live long 
enough to see the posts rotten. The 
posts should be well seasoned and dry 
when the paint is applied. 


AWNINGS. 


Awnings of linen were first used by 
the Romans in the theater at the dedi¬ 
cation of the Temple of Jupiter, B. C. 
69. It is also claimed that cotton 
awnings were used before that time. 
They were made of different colors. 
Over the amphitheater of the Emperor 
Nero, the awnings were extended by 
the aid of ropes and dyed azure, like the 
heavens, and bespangled with stars. 
In the Roman houses the halls for 
audiences had an opening in the middle 
which was covered in summer with a 
red awning. 


UP SALT RIVER. 


The origin of this expression, as ap¬ 
plied to a defeated political party, was 
as follows: Davy, Crockett, the famous 
Kentucky Congressman, while a Whig 
candidate, was challenged by his Dem¬ 
ocratic opponent to meet him on the 
stump in joint discussion. Crockett 
accepted and the day and place were 
fixed, but Crockett did not appear, and 
the people thinking him afraid to do so, 
rallied for his opponent and elected 
'him. It afterwards turned out that 
Crockett, who had started for the place 
in a canoe propelled by a negro, had 
been landed in the forest at the head 
waters of the Salt River by his treach¬ 
erous guide, who then paddled swiftly 
off down stream. Crockett was too 
good a hunter to starve in the wilder¬ 
ness, but he was totally unable to reach 
the appointed place in time, and he 
gave it up, and with it his chance of 
election. Hence the phrase “ Up Salt 
River ”—meaning that party is hope¬ 
lessly defeated. Crockett, however, 
was more lucky ten years after being 
elected by a handsome majority. 












358 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


RICHES FROM DAILY SAVINGS. 


COMMERCE OF THE WORLD. 


Yery few people are aware of the 
results to be accomplished in a series 
of years, by the habit of saving a 
small amount each day, and putting it 
at interest. Most persons spend these 
small amounts on unnecessary and 
useless luxuries; and because each 
amount is small, they fail to take any 
particular notice of it, and utterly fail 
to estimate the aggregate of such 
spendings during the course of a life. 
In this way, many a man spends a for¬ 
tune without knowing it; and in this 
way, too, the poor are kept poor. 

Most people in this country who 
enjoy an average degree of health, and 
who are industrious, earn at least a 
small surplus beyond their necessary 
expenses ; and if they would save this 
surplus and put it to interest, they 
would find in the end a much larger 
accumulation than they had antici¬ 
pated. Thousands of them would 
have a competency, if living to old 
age, instead of being dependent on the 
charity of others. We submit the fol¬ 
lowing table, to show what would be 
the result at the end ot fifty years, by 
saving a certain amount each day and 
putting it to interest, at the rate of six 
per cent: 


Daily Saving. 


The Result. 


One cent.$ 950 

Ten cents. 9,504 

Twenty cents.19,008 

Thirty cents. 28,512 

Forty cents. 38,016 

Fifty cents. 47,520 

Sixty cents.57,024 

Seventy cents. 66,528 

Eighty cents. 76,032 

Ninety cents. 85,527 

One dollar. 95,041 

F ve dollars.475,203 

Ten dollars.950,406 


The daily saving of sums intermedi¬ 
ate between those named in the table, 
would, of course, yield similar results. 
There is no man, woman or child liv¬ 
ing to whom it would not convey a 
very important practical lesson. 


France exports wines, brandies, silks, 
fancy articles, furniture, jewelry, 
clocks, watches, paper, perfumery, and 
fancy goods generally. 

Italy exports corn, oil, flax, wines, 
essences, dye stuffs, drugs, fine marble, 
soaps, paintings, engravings, mosaics 
and salt. 

Prussia exports linens, woolens, 
zinc, articles of iron, copper and brass, 
indigo, wax, hams, musical instru¬ 
ments, tobacco, wine and porcelain. 

Germany exports wool, woolen 
goods, linens, rags, corn, timber, iron, 
lead, tin, flax, hemp, wine, wax, tallow 
and cattle. 

Austria exports minerals, raw and 
manufactured silk, thread, glass, wax, 
tar, nutgall, wine, honey, and mathe¬ 
matical instruments. 

England exports cotton, woolens, 
glass, hardware, earthenware, cutlery, 
iron, steel, metallic wares, salt, coal, 
watches, tin, silks, and linens. 

Russia exports tallow, flax, hemp, 
flour, iron, copper, linseed, lard, hides, 
wax, ducks, cordage, bristles, furs, 
potash and tar. 

Spain exports wine, brandy, oil, 
fresh and dried fruits, quicksilver, 
sulphur, corn, saffron, anchovies, silk, 
and woolens. 

China exports tea, rhubarb, musk, 
ginger, borax, zinc, silks, cassia, 
filagree works, ivory ware, lacquered 
ware, and morocco. 

Hindostan exports gold and silver, 
cochineal, indigo, sarsaparilla, vanilla, 
jalap, fustic, campeachy wood, pimento, 
drugs, and dye stuffs. 

Brazil exports coffee, indigo, sugar, 
rice, hides, dried meats, tallow, gold, 
diamonds, and other precious stones, 
gums, mahogany and India rubber. 

West Indies export sugar, sugar 




















THE PEOPLES’ ^jlBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


359 


molasses, rum, tobacco, cigars, mahog- 
an Ji dye woods, coffee, pimento, fresh 
fruit and preserves, wax, ginger, and 
other spices. 

Switzerland exports cattle, cheese, 
butter, tallow, dried fruits, linen, silks, 
velvets, lace, jewelry, paper and gun¬ 
powder. 

East India exports cloves, nutmegs, 
mace, pepper, rice, indigo, gold dust, 
camphor, benzine, sulphur, ivory, 
rattans, sandal wood, zinc and nuts. 

United States export principally 
agricultural produce, cotton, tobacco, 
flour, provisions of all kinds, lumber, 
turpentine, wearing apparel. 


LAMPBLACK. 

Its manufacture is very simple, and 
the apparatus cheaply built. The 
refuse tar, resin, etc., is put in iron 
pots or in a furnace, and burned with 
the least possible admission of air — 
just sufficient to keep up a low com¬ 
bustion— in order to produce a dense 
smoke without much flame. The 
smoke is led into cylindrical, upright 
chambers, lined with sheepskin, woolen 
cloth or canvas. The roof is conical 
in form, made of sheet iron, hanging 
within the cylinder. This roof is sus¬ 
pended by pulley and chain, and is 
occasionally lowered to the bottom, in 
its progress scraping the accumulated 
lampblack from the sides and deposit¬ 
ing it on the bottom, from which it 
is all removed by means of a hoe or 
scraper through a small door. A 
series of these cylinders may be used, 
communicating with each other by 
horizontal passages, the roof of the last 
one being partially open at the apex, 
to allow for a draft. The lampblack 
deposited in the last of a series is the 
finest; but the best of it contains 
more or less resinous and oleaginous 


matter, which must be eliminated, to 
purify the product. This is done by 
heating the lampblack in cast iron 
boxes with a close cover, raising and 
keeping the lampblack at a red heat 
for two or three hours. 

Ivory black, used largely by artists 
as a pigment, and bone black, em¬ 
ployed in the purification of sugars, 
are the product of the destructive dis¬ 
tillation of animal bones. Spanish 
black is the carbon of cork, and has a 
brownish tinge. Peach black, result¬ 
ing from the combustion of peach 
kernels, has a bluish tint. All these 
forms of carbon are used as pigments. 


THE MANUFACTURE OF ORNAMENT¬ 
AL FEATHERS. 

An interesting account of the man¬ 
ufacture of ornamental feathers, an 
industry which employs about two 
hundred and forty working women 
and apprentices in Vienna, is given in 
the “ Translations of Official Austrian 
Reports on the Universal Exhibition ” 
in that city. The coloring is done by 
men, the other processes mostly by 
women. African ostrich feathers are 
most usually manufactured. There 
are white, black, gray and dappled, 
and are classified according to quality 
as u prima,” “ secunda,” etc. Other 
feathers frequently worked are those 
of the white heron, bird of paradise 
and marabou (there are genuine mara¬ 
bou feathers and false). The white 
prime ostrich feather is the finest of 
all. The feather is cleaned first by a 
cold soap bath, well washed twice or 
thrice, and then put into warm 

soap baths, afterward well washed 

in cold water, then blued a little, 
pressed, and swung to and fro 
in the air until the hairs have 

spread and the feather is quite 













360 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


dry. Next, with a small, sharp knife, 
the strong rib of the back is cut away. 
The feather loses its stiffness and 
acquires pliability. With small feath¬ 
ers this is obtained by scraping the 
rib with glass. Then the hairs on 
each side of the rib are made to curl 
in with a blunt knife, and the requi¬ 
site uniformity of shape is given them 
by combing them over a slightly 
warmed iron. Next, in order to hide 
the rib, the worker, with a blunt 
knife, twists here and there some hairs 
of the feather spirally over the rib 
until it is completely concealed by 
them. The feather is then threaded 
with a wire, folded in paper and so 
completed. The same process is fol¬ 
lowed with gray and black ostrich 
feathers, except that the gray are gen¬ 
erally, and the black always colored. 
White feathers are onl}” colored for 
some particular fashion of color, as 
rose, violet, etc. If the hair on a 
feather is not dense enough, or the 
feather is defective, then two or three 
feathers are sewn together and 
curled. This is done with both long 
and short feathers. Long feathers 
are called “leaf feathers, 11 “Amazons 
short feathers, generally three of a 
bundle, are called “panache. 11 Single 
and sewn feathers are distinguished 
in both. The hair of the ostrich 
feather is also much used for the man¬ 
ufacture of fancy feathers — cockades, 
fringes, etc., are made of these. 

The feathers are twined by a ma¬ 
chine, and then joined to the hairs of 
other feathers. These combinations 
are called “pleureuses, 11 and pieces of 
ostrich feathers are sewn together to 
a length of some ells, and called 
“bordures, 11 and are used to decorate 
dresses. There is an American ostrich 
feather called “vulture, 11 which is 
worked like the “African, 11 but is 


inferior to it in quality. Tempting 
white feathers called marabou are 
much worked. They are used for 
fancy feathers; the points of small 
white or colored pigeon feathers and 
very small fragments of silk and the 
like are joined on them. “ Bordures ” 
for ball dresses are made of them. It 
is evident from this account that “to 
show the white feather 11 is a process 
which entails some trouble and ex¬ 
pense. 


LUXURY IN ANCIENT ROME. 

If anything more were wanted to 
give us an idea of Roman magnifi¬ 
cence, we would turn our eyes 
from public monuments, demoralizing 
games, and grand processions; we 
would forget the statues in brass and 
marble, which outnumbered the liv¬ 
ing inhabitants, so numerous that one 
hundred thousand have been recovered 
and still embellish Italy, and would 
descend into the lower sphere of 
material life to those things which 
attest luxury and taste, to ornaments, 
dresses, sumptuous living, and rich 
furniture. The art of using metals 
and precious stones surpasses anything 
known at the present time. 

In the decoration of houses, in 
social entertainments, in cookery, 
the Romans were remarkable. The 
mosaics, signet rings, cameos, brace¬ 
lets, bronzes, chains, vases, mirrors, 
mattresses, cosmetics, perfumes, hair 
dyes, silk robes, potteries,—all attest 
great elegance and beauty. The 
tables of thugaroot and Italian bronze 
were as expensive as the side-boards 
of Spanish walnut, so much admired 
in the great exhibition at London. 
Wood and ivory were carved as ex¬ 
quisitely as in Japan and China. 
Mirrors were made of polished silver. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


361 


Glass-cutters could imitate the colors 
of precious stones so well that the 
Portland vase, from the tomb of 
Alexander Severus, was long con¬ 
sidered as a genuine sardonyx ; brass 
could be hardened so as to cut 
stone. 

The palace of Nero glittered with 
gold and jewels. Perfumes and flowers 
were showered from ivory ceilings. 
The halls of Heliogabalus were hung 
with cloth and gold, enriched with 
jewelry. His beads were silver, and 
his table of gold. Tiberius gave a 
million of sesterces for a picture for 
his bedroom. A banquet dish of 
Disilus weighed five hundred pounds 
of silver. The cups of Dresus were 
of gold. Tunics were embroidered 
with the figures of various animals. 
Paulina wore jewels, when she paid 
visits, valued at $35,000. Drinking- 
cups were engraved with scenes from 
the poets. Libraries were adorned 
with busts and presses of rare wood. 
Sofas were inlaid with tortoise-shell, 
and covered with gorgeous purple. 

The Roman grandees rode in gilded 
chariots, bathed in marble baths, dined 
from golden plate, drank from crystal 
cups, slept on beds of down, reclined 
on luxurious couches, wore embroid¬ 
ered robes, and were adorned with 
precious stones; they ransacked the 
earth and the sea for rare dishes for 
their banquets, and ornamented their 
houses with carpets from Babylon, 
onyx cups from Bethnia, marble from 
Numidia, bronzes from Corinth, 
statues from Athens,— whatever, in 
short, was precious or curious in most 
countries. The luxuries of the bath 
almost exceeded belief; and on the 
walls were magnificent frescoes and 
paintings, exhibiting an inexhaustible 
productiveness in landscape and mytho¬ 
logical scenes. 


SLEEP—THE AMOUNT NECESSARY. 


Prof. Dickson, in his Essay on 
Sleep, says the necessary amount must 
differ in the various tribes, as well as 
in different individuals, according to 
numerous and varied contingencies. 
The average proportion of time thus 
employed by our race may be 
stated pretty fairly, I think, at one- 
third. The allotment of Sir William 
Jones, slightly altered from an old 
English poet, does not depart much 
from this standard : 

“ Seven hours to books, to soothing slumber seven, 
Ten to the world allot, and all to Heaven.” 

The busy engagement of ambition 
and avarice mav induce men to sub- 
tract more or less from their due re¬ 
pose, but any considerable deduction 
must be made at a great risk to both 
mind and body. Sir John Sinclair, 
who slept eight hours himself, says 
that in his researches into the subject 
of longevity, he found long life under 
all circumstances and every course of 
habit; some old men being abstinent, 
some intemperate; some active, and 
some indolent; but all had slept well 
and long. Yet he gives a letter from 
a correspondent, recording the case of 
an old man of ninety-one years of age, 
who had slept through life but four 
hours a day. Alfred the Great slept 
eight hours, Jeremy Taylor but three. 
Dr. Gooch tells us of an individual 
who slept only fifteen minutes in the 
day ; but it is scarcely credible. Bona¬ 
parte, during the greater part of his 
active life, was content with four or 
five hours’ sleep; the same is said of 
Frederick the Great, and of John 
Hunter. I know familiarly a person 
whose average has been even lower 
than this; I have .heard his wife say 
that they were married four years be¬ 
fore she had ever seen him sleep. 






362 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Seneca is quoted as telling the in¬ 
credible story of Mecsenas, that he 
passed three years without sleep¬ 
ing a single hour. Boerhave says 
of himself that he was six weeks 
without sleep, from intense and con¬ 
tinued study. Statements like these 
demand close examination and clear 
proof. 

Of long protracted sleep there are 
numerous and wonderful tales, from 
the story of the Seven Sleepers of 
Ephesus and their dog—to be found 
in the early legends of the Church ; in 
the Koran, Chapter of the Cave ; all 
over the East, as Gibbon tells us ; and 
even in Scandinavia—down to the 
exquisite Rip Van Winkle of our 
Washington Irving. In the Philo¬ 
sophical Transactions we read of one 
Samuel Clinton, a laboring man, who 
frequently slept several weeks at a 
time, and once, more than three 
months without waking. In the 
Berlin Memoirs of the Academy of 
Sciences , there is a curious story of a 
lady of Nisrnes, who fell asleep irresisti¬ 
bly at sunrise, woke for a brief 
interval at noon, fell asleep again, and 
continued in that state until seven or 
eight in the evening, when she awoke, 
and remained awake until the next 
sunrise. 


BUTTER 1ND CHEESE. 

The ancient mode of making butter 
was the same as practiced by the Be¬ 
douin Arabs and the Moors in Barbary 
at the present day. The cream is 
placed in a goatskin, and agitated by 
hand or by treading it with the feet. 
Butter and honey mentioned by Isaiah 
vii, 15, is to this day an article of food 
in the East. The word shamea , ren¬ 
dered blitter in our translation of the 
Bible, seems to have referred to several 


forms of milk and its productions, such 
as sweet or sour milk, cream, thick 
milk, curd, or butter. It was used for 
anointing, and it is said that it was the 
butter of kine and milk of sheep that 
made Jeshurun wax fat and rich. Ab¬ 
raham took butter and milk and the 
calf which he had dressed and set before 
three strangevisitors. Sisera asked for 
water, and Jael, the wife of Heber, the 
Kemte, gave him milk, and brought 
forth butter in a lordly dish. The 
Turks prefer sour to sweet milk. But¬ 
ter is mentioned by Herodotus. (484 B. 
C.) He says they pour the milk into 
wooden vessels; cause it to be violently 
stirred or shaken by their blind slaves, 
and separate the part that arises to the 
surface, as they consider it more valu¬ 
able and more delicious than that which 
is collected below it. Hippocrates (460 
B. C.) describes the process more clear¬ 
ly, stating that the lighter portion (but¬ 
ter) rises to the top, and the other part 
was separated into a liquid and solid 
portion, ( curd and ivhey ), of which the 
former was pressed and dried, (cheese)* 
Strabo speaks of butter being used by 
the Ethiopians. Pliny describes the 
use of butter and cheese by the barba¬ 
rous Germans. The Romans used but¬ 
ter for anointing, the Germans for hair¬ 
dressing, and the Egyptians for burn¬ 
ing. Butter was used instead of oil by 
the Christians of Egypt, in the third 
century. Cheese was also used among 
the pastoral nations of Canaan and 
Asia Minor, also among the Scythians. 
Hippocrates, (460 B. C.) states that the 
mode of preparing this food from milk, 
was discovered by the Scythians t at a 
very early date. Cheese is mentioned 
several times in the Old Testament 
Scriptures, but each time under a dif¬ 
ferent name. Butter and cheese both 
form a staple article of diet to many 
nations of the globe. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


363 


RAISINS. 


Spain is the greatest producer of 
raisins. Those styled Valencia raisins 
find great favor with all classes of 
English people. A few years ago a 
crop of 12,000 tons, for the supply of 
the world, was considered large; now 
London receives 12,000 tons out of a 
total of 20,000 tons that are grown. 
These raisins also find a large market 
in the United States and Canada. 
The improvement in the article most 
observable of late years, is that of 
removing the stalks before shipment. 
As no useful purpose has been found 
as yet for the stalks, they are gen¬ 
erally burned. Muscatel, or table 
raisins from Malaga, vary widely in 
quality. They are known as “ lay¬ 
ers,” “bunch,” and “loose” raisins, 
the best being picked from the stalk. 
This sort is largely used in America. 
The finest growth of Muscatels come 
to this country in decorated boxes, 
with colored paper and lace edgings, 
increasing the expense of packing to 
the extent of $1.25 per ton. 

The Sultana raisins, produced in 
Turkey, are cured in the sun, a slight 
sprinkling of oil being employed to 
prevent the too great evaporation of 
the moisture, and also to assist in the 
preservation of the fruit when packed 
and shipped. The Germans are also 
large consumers of these raisins, and 
they constitute an article of consider¬ 
able traffic between Trieste and 
Smyrna. The Eleme raisins are also 
produced in Turkey, and are used 
chiefly for export to distant colonies, 
and for ships' stores. As their name 
implies, they are picked raisins, and 
are packed specially for ship use from 
the vines of the Curaboura and Vouria 
districts in Asia Minor. The greater 
proportion of the raisins from Smyrna 


are known as “ Chesme,” the name of 
the island near the mainland. These 
are the Turkey grapes, pure and 
simple, without selection, picking of 
stalks, or any manipulation whatever. 
They find a ready market in Eastern 
countries, but are the special feature 
of fruit-trading between Turkey and 
German ports. There are vast dis¬ 
tricts in Persia where raisins are 
cultivated, but the difficulty of get¬ 
ting them to market is so great that 
it does not pay to export; conse¬ 
quently they are used for distilling 
and local purposes. At the Cape of 
Good Hope, raisins are produced which 
find a market chiefly in Australia. 


THE COW TREE. 

“Among the many curious phenom¬ 
ena which presented themselves to me 
in the course of my travels,” says 
Humboldt, “ I confess there were few 
by which my imagination was so pow¬ 
erfully affected as by the cow-tree. 
On the parched side of a rock on the 
mountains of Venezuela grows a tree 
with dry and leathery foliage, its 
large, woody roots scarcely penetrating 
into the ground. For several months 
in the year its leaves are not moistened 
by a shower; its branches look as if 
they were dead and withered; but 
when the trunk is bored, a bland and 
nourishing milk flows from it. It is 
at sunrise that the vegetable fountain 
flows most freely. At that time the 
blacks and natives are seen coming 
from all parts, provided with large 
bowls, to receive the milk, which 
grows yellow, and thickens at its sur¬ 
face. Some empty their vessels on the 
spot, while others carry them to their 
children. One imagines he sees the 
family of a shepherd who is dis¬ 
tributing the milk of his flock.” 









364 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


THE OLDEST PIANO IN AMERICA. 


The oldest piano in this country, so 
it is supposed, lias recently been pre¬ 
sented to the New Haven Historical 
Society, by Mr. C. M. Loomis, the pub¬ 
lisher of Loomis’ Musical Journal\ 
New Haven, Conn. This instrument 
was made by an Italian firm in the 
city of London, in the year 1786. The 
mechanical action is similar to pianos 
of the present day. The wires are 
small and placed together. There is 
a peculiar sweetness of tone to many 
of the chords, which would indicate 
that the piano was a good one in its 
day. It seems that an English lady 
named Mrs. Sarah Palmer imported 
the piano to this country about 1796. 
Soon after it came into the possession 
of a family by the name of Bake well, 
where it remained for a period of 
about sixty years. Finally, Mr. Loomis 
obtained some knowledge of the facts 
narrated above, and tracked out the 
instrument, which he purchased for 
a high price, simply as a curiosity. 


CRUCIBLE. 

Crucib es are mentioned by Greek 
authors and are shown in the ancient 
Egyptian paintings. In the sixteenth 
century, Agricola the celebrated metal¬ 
lurgist, and Glauber, a noted chemist, 
made their own crucibles. Metallic 
crucibles are made of platinum, silver, 
or iron. Hessian crucibles are made of 
the best fire-clay and coarse sand. At 
Picardy in France, they make an ex¬ 
cellent crucible of a sort of kaolin and 
fine sand. In the early part of the 
seventeenth century, the Dutch made 
what were known as “ blue-pots ” or 
u black-lead pots ” of clay and graphite. 
In 1827, Mr. Joseph Dixon began the 
manufacture of crucibles by mixing 


the graphite known as plumbago, 
found in New Hampshire, with a clay 
used by the glass makers for melting 
pots. He afterward, about 1830, 
adopted the Dutch pipe-clay to mix 
with the Ceylon graphite which was 
brought home by the captains of India 
ships as curiosities. They are now 
made at the Dixon works, Jersey City, 
New Jersey, of all sizes, from those 
that hold but two ounces up to six 
hundred pounds capacity. 


THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 

The discovery or origin of Music 
has by some writers been credited to 
the Egyptians, doubtless from the 
fact that, as far as we know, they 
were the most successful of the old 
nations in the cultivation of the art. 
It must not be overlooked, however, 
that, after all, our records of the 
world's history cover a comparatively 
small period, and that on the subject 
of music especially we have but scant 
data to go upon. It cannot be denied 
that the art flourished in considerable 
perfection among the Egyptians, who, 
we know, constructed various instru¬ 
ments, mainly for the accompaniment 
of song. For these instruments it is 
said the Egyptians were indebted to 
the river Nile, after an inundation of 
which a quantity of reeds would be 
left behind on the banks, and the wind 
whistling through these reeds sug¬ 
gested ideas for flutes and other wind 
instruments. As a great deal of an¬ 
cient history has come down to us 
disguised in fable, so we are told that 
Mercury, in one of his rambles, once 
struck his foot against the shell of a 
dead tortoise, and finding it delight¬ 
fully sonorous, it occurred to him to 
construct a lyre in the shape of a tor¬ 
toise. Recent discoveries in the bot- 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


365 


tom of Swiss lakes, in caves, and so 
forth, go to prove that musical in¬ 
struments were in use among other 
ancient tribes and nations, entirely 
distinct from, and independent of the 
Egyptians. 

It is, therefore, quite safe to assume 
that the origin of musical sounds is 
of twin birth with the origin of lan¬ 
guage. But of its history and devel¬ 
opment but little will be known 
until the advent of some musical Max 
Mueller. 

% 


TOBACCO. 

The tobacco plant is a native of 
America, but is cultivated in many 
other countries. It grows to the 
height of five or six.feet, with a hairy 
and clammy stem. The leaves are 
large, the lowest being of the least 
value. When fresh, they possess little 
odor or taste. The plants when ripe 
are cut off above their roots and dried 
under coverj the odor becomes strong 
and acrid. The leaves are stripped off, 
sorted and packed in hogsheads for 
shipment. When well cured, they are 
of a yellowish green color. Tobacco 
is used in various ways. The leaves 
rolled up in a peculiar form constitute 
cigars, for smoking. Ground to a 
powder, they are used as snuff, while 
for chewing the leaves are pressed into 
cakes and masses, or reduced to small 
fragments for the pipe. 

This plant contains principles which 
are among the most virulent poisons 
known. By various processes these 
may be extracted. To the most im¬ 
portant of them the name of nicotine 
is given, from that of Jean Nicot, who, 
in 1560, sent seeds of the plant from 
Portugal, where he was at the time 
the French embassador to Catherine 
de Medicis, thus introducing it into 


France. The botanical name, Nicoti- 
ana Tobacum, is also derived from the 
same source. 

Tobacco was first discovered by the 
Spaniards in St. Domingo in 1498. 
It was first carried to England in 1565, 
by Sir John Hawkins or Sir Walter 
Raleigh, and has ever since been grow¬ 
ing in importance as an article of 
commerce, having been introduced 
more or less into every part of the 
world. The name is thought by some 
to have been given in consequence of 
its early importation from Tobago, one 
of the Carribee Islands. Others think 
it received its name from Tobaco, a 
province of Yucatan ; and still others, 
that it was called from Tobasco, in 
the Gulf of Florida. Humboldt has 
shown that Tobacco was the term em¬ 
ployed in the Haytian language to 
designate the pipe used by the natives 
in smoking, the name having been 
transferred by the Spaniards to the 
plant itself, and adopted by other na¬ 
tions. 


POSTS AND MAILS. 

The name of post is said to be de¬ 
rived from the Latin posit us, which 
means placed, because horses were 
anciently placed at certain distances 
apart for the purpose of transporting 
messengers or letters. These messen¬ 
gers, who traveled on horseback, were 
generally in the service of the gov¬ 
ernment. The first posts date back 
to the time of Darius I. of Persia, B. 
C. 522, who, we read, caused couriers 
with saddle-horses to stand ready at 
different stations a day’s distance 
apart, throughout the empire, in or¬ 
der to receive reports from the prov¬ 
inces without delay. In some of the 
Eastern countries carrier pigeons were 
used in early times to convey informa- 













366 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


tion, but never to any great extent. 
A pigeon post was established and 
sustained at great expense for half a 
century or more by some of the Ca¬ 
liphs of Bagdad and other Mohamme¬ 
dan princes, but at length the birds 
fell into the hands of enemies, and 
the system was destroyed. During 
the late conflict between the French 
and Prussians, the pigeon post was 
again brought into service. In an¬ 
cient times the dispatch was neces¬ 
sarily short, as the slightest weight 
was an impediment to the bird’s 
flight. Modern science and skill have 
remedied this by applying to it the 
photographic art. No less than 3,500 
dispatches of twenty words each 
could be carried by one of these 
carrier pigeons. At the end of the 
route the dispatches were read with 
the utmost facility. A page of the 
London Times has been compressed 
into the space of less than an inch. 
When commerce began to flourish in 
modern times, post coaches, or stages 
were employed, and at the present 
time, where the railroad is not yet 
available for the service, letters and 
other mail matter are thus conveyed, 
the Government forming a contract 
with the owners of coaches and other 
public vehicles to this effect. In En¬ 
gland, a guard accompanies the mail 
for its protection. The first regular 
post-office was established in England 
in 1654, by Cromwell. The office of 
Postmaster-General in England was 
first conferred by Queen Elizabeth 
upon Thomas Randolph, a gentleman 
who had aided essentially in the estab¬ 
lishment of the mail system in Great 
Britain. In this country the first 
post-office was established by an Act 
of Parliament in 1710. After the 
Revolution this department came 
under the control of the new Govern¬ 


ment, and was placed by the Constitu¬ 
tion in charge of Congress with power 
to establish post-offices and post-roads, 
and provide for the safe transmission 
of mail matter all over the country. 
The entire business is under the di¬ 
rection of the Postmaster-General at 
Washington. The word mail, as ap¬ 
plied to our postal system, comes from 
the French malle , a trunk, or similar 
word in several other modern lan¬ 
guages, having the significance of 
sack, bag, budget, etc. Hence, the 
contents of such a bag or sack have 
come to bear the meaning of the origi¬ 
nal word. 


THE FIRST BANK. 

The first bank, of which we 
have any reliable record, was es¬ 
tablished in Italy, A. D., 808, by the 
Lombard Jews, of whom many 
afterwards settled in Lombard street, 
London, where many bankers still 
reside. The name is derived from 
banco , a bench which was usually 
erected in the market place for the 
exchange of money. The English 
merchants, lacking a safe place to 
deposit their cash, first used the Mint 
in the Tower of London for this 
purpose, but the credit of the mint 
was destroyed when King Charles I. 
laid his hands upon the money, and 
appropriated it to his own use in 1640. 
The traders were thus driven to seek 
some other place of security for their 
gold, not daring to keep it in their 
own possession, as their clerks ‘and 
apprentices frequently absconded with 
it. In 1645, they were induced to 
lodge it with the goldsmiths of Lom¬ 
bard street, who were provided with 
strong chests for their own valuable 
wares, and this became the origin of 
banks in England. 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


3C7 


FANS. 


Fans are a very ancient invention, 
being found painted on the walls of 
tombs at Thebes, in Egypt, showing 
their use more than 3,000 years ago. 
The forms were different, but some 
were very beautiful. They were origi¬ 
nally made of feathers, and bound to¬ 
gether like the tail of a peacock when 
spread out. In 1560, Catherine de 
Medieis introduced the fan in France, 
where it has long been an article of 
manufacture and commerce. The Chi¬ 
nese are the only great rivals of the 
French, and the two nations have in 
a good degree the monopoly of the 
business. In China the manufacture 
is chiefly confined to Canton and a 
few other towns. In France, Paris is 
the chief centre of the fan business, 
which gives employment to a great 
number of men, women and children. 
The Chinese and Japanese produce the 
lacquered bamboo, and palm-leaf fans, 
sometimes of large size, to serve for 
parasols. The palmetto, with the 
natural stem for a handle, is a very 
durable, cheap and convenient fan. 


HISTORY OF SHOES. 


The antiquity of shoes is, no doubt, 
as early as the civilization of mankind. 
We find that they were worn by the 
ancient Egyptians; several of their 
actual shoes, having been preserved to 
the present day, may be seen in the 
British Museum. They are formed of 
matting, the bark of the papyrus, 
leather, and other materials. Shoes 
were also used by the Greeks and 
Romans, though they generally wore 
sandals, which were merely soles tied 
on the feet with thongs. It would be 
endless to mention the variety of shoes 
that have been in use at different 


times, and among various nations. 
The most simple kind of shoes appears 
to have been merely a piece of leather, 
bound round the foot, and such are 
still used in remote sections in the 
highlands of Scotland, where they are 
called brogues. In the reign of 
Edward IV., shoes were pointed at the 
toes, and had long beaks, of four or 
five inches, turned up and fastened to 
the knee by a chain. Afterward they 
were quite round at the toes, and 
ornamented with spangles. In the 
time of Charles I., the toes were made 
quite square. The Greeks seldom 
wore shoes, but when the}" do occur in 
Greek or Roman sculpture, they are 
round at the toes. The shoes of olden 
times do not appear to have been 
blacked, which color is now most 
universaly used. 


THE HISTORY OF TEA. 

The beverage so named, and now 
become almost a necessary of life in 
a great part of the British Isles, was 
wholly unknown to the Greeks and 
Romans, as likewise to our ancestors, 
previous to the middle of the seven¬ 
teenth century. The date of its begin¬ 
ning to be used in this country is 
ascertained by the fact that a duty of 
eight pence per gallon was in 1660 laid 
on the infusion of tea made and sold in 
the coffee-houses in London, and that its 
use had not at that time become very 
general, is shown by an entry in the 
published diary of Mr. Pepy’s Seere- 
tar}^ to the Admiralty, September 25, 
1661. “ I sent for a cup of tea (a 

China drink) of which I had never 
drank before.” It does not appear 
clear by whom tea was first imported 
into Europe. We learn from Mickle, 
that the Portuguese, who had inter¬ 
course with China in 1517, were 










368 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


allowed to purchase silks, porcelain 
and tea, but we have no evidence how 
far they availed themselves of the 
privilege with respect to the latter. 
That they were acquainted with the 
use of an article in such general con¬ 
sumption among the Chinese, is 
rendered very probable from the 
circumstance that they are the only 
European nation who designate the 
plant by its national name of tescha , 
all others applying to it the provincial 
name of te, derived from the dialect of 
Tokien, the Province with which the 
English and Dutch maintained their 
earliest intercourse. The Dutch ar¬ 
rived for the first time in China in 
1601, but there is no authentic evi¬ 
dence that either they or the English, 
who appeared about the same time in 
the Eastern seas, imported tea during 
the first half century of their inter¬ 
course with the East. No doubt, 
however, from the facts we have 
noticed, it was brought to Europe 
about that time, and that the taste 
for it was beginning to spread in 1660. 
It was, however, so rare a commodity 
in England in 1664, that the English 
East India Company at that time 
brought two pounds two ounces of it 
to His Majesty, and it was not im¬ 
ported much from China but from 
Holland. In 1666, Lord Arlington and 
Lord Ossey brought over from the 
latter country a quantity, at which 
time it was sold in England for sixty 
shillings a pound. The Dutch pro¬ 
cured it from Bantam, then one of 
the principal emporiums of India, and 
much frequented by the junks or ships 
of Canton. But it was scarcely then 
considered an article of commerce. In 
1667, we find that the East India 
Company gave their first order to 
their agent at Bantam, to send home 
100 pounds of tea for the purpose of 


u making presents to their friends at 
court.” From that time the consump¬ 
tion increased, and in 1678 nearly 
5,000 pounds were imported. The 
demand has steadily increased, until 
now the consumption is enormous of 
this universal beverage. 


ABOUT ORANGES. 

A French paper, in an article on 
oranges, says : 

“ In no city of the world are orange 
blossoms so generally employed as in 
Paris; chemists use every part of 
pistil, leaves and petals for phar¬ 
maceutical purposes; perfumers extract 
an essence called 4 Portugal 1 from the 
rind of the fruit, and distil the most 
delicate eau-de-fleur d’oranger for the 
skin; confectioners frost the buds over 
with sugar, and employ the water for 
pastilles; cooks owe the success of a 
number of entremets to its flavor, and 
many are the invalids who feel relieved 
by the soothing effect of orange-flower 
tea. Any traveler who has visited the 
department of the Var will remember 
that every other cottage in the village 
around Grasse bears the sign of an 
orange or orange tree, painted over the 
door, for every inhabitant either sells 
or manufactures a liquor or an essence 
from the product of the trees or 
flowers. It has been remarked that 
nature was never more bounteous than 
when she showered down perfumes on 
the valleys and environs of Grasse, the 
Streets of this busy little town being 
the filthiest and narrowest of any in 
the South of France. 

Although the orange has now 
become as common a fruit with us as 
the apple, there is a poetic fancy con¬ 
nected with Southern orange gioves, 
which our Northern oranges do not 
inspire. The Seville orange goes by 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


369 


the name of naring, whence the Span¬ 
ish naranja , and our derivate, orange, 
but it is not a native of Spain. The 
original orange tree was conveyed from 
India to Palestine and Syria, whence 
the crusaders brought it to Marseilles, 
with the apricot and Damascus plum. 
The Genoese were the first to discover 
its value as an article of trade, and as 
early as 1336 we read of a prince pur¬ 
chasing orange trees at Nice, but the 
oranges sold were the bitter and 
intensely sour fruit, which royalty, in 
such distant days, did not disdain to 
eat with salt! 

We read that Charles IX. of France, 
was astonished at the thickness and 
beauty of the orange forests of Hyeres. 
The French called these wild oranges 
u bigaradiers,” just as they now call 
the wild cherry u bigarreau.” The 
sweet orange was first brought from 
China, and the earliest of them grew 
in Portugal, Africa, and along the 
Mediterranean, the Blidah and Maltese 
orange soon becoming famous. There 
are four historical orange trees — one 
at Nice, in 1779, which had attained 
the prodigious height of fifty feet, and 
under the shade of which forty guests 
sat down to table. An orange tree is 
still shown at the Convent of St. 
Sabine, a little way out of Home, 
which was planted by St. Dominic, in 
1260; there is another at the Fundi 
Monastery, Naples, planted by St. 
Thomas d’Aquinas, and the fourth is 
the Grand Bourbon, at the Versailles 
Orangery. The history of the Grand 
Bourbon is recorded in the Royal 
Archives, as follows: Tn 1121, a 
Princess of Navarre planted within 
a box, in the garden of Pampenula, 
the five small seeds of a bitter orange. 
In 1199, Catherine de Foix, being 
desirous to offer to Anne de Bretagne 
a very rare present, sent her the box 


in which the five seeds had grown up 
and formed five small orange trees; 
she also sent the history of their 
origin and culture. In the course of 
time these trees came down to the 
Constable de Bourbon, who greatly 
prized them, and had them trans¬ 
planted, as his predecessors had suc¬ 
cessively done, and thus promoted 
their growth. These orange trees 
were the pride of his garden at the 
Chateau de Chantelles-en-Bourbonnais. 
When Francis I. confiscated the prop¬ 
erty, the trees were carried to Fontaine¬ 
bleau. 

We find them mentioned in Dan- 
geau’s Journal , under the date of the 
7th of June, 1687: “Toward five this 
afternoon the King went on foot to 
the orangery, whither the fine orange 
trees have been conveyed from Fon¬ 
tainebleau. 1 ’ The tree referred to in 
the inventory of the Constable’s pos¬ 
sessions was put down as “ an orange 
tree with five branches, brought from 
Pampeluna.” Three of these five 
stems have grown together, and form 
but one trunk, but the other two part 
some way up the trunk, and form two 
separate orange trees. 

One of the most singular botanical 
facts related of any tree is, that the 
same orange bush often contains flow¬ 
ers, green fruit and fully ripe fruit at 
the same time, and few know that this 
it is which caused early poets to call 
it the emblem of brides, “for,” as says 
an old Latin chronicler, “my bride is 
my children’s mother, a comely flower 
by the side of her small fruit.” 

Another curious fact in regard to 
orange trees is, that they can be trans¬ 
planted at any age, even very old 
trees. In tropical countries, the best 
transplanting seasons are December 
and June, on account of the frequent 
rains. There are several methods of 





370 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


rearing sweet oranges. Many plant 
the seed and wait for five or seven 
years before the fruit grows ; this is 
the long, slow way. The best is to 
obtain sour orange trees of the proper 
size, and bud them with sweet orange 
buds in the same way as peach trees. 
The ordinary time of their bearing 
after that is three years. 

The sale of artificial orange flowers 
in Paris brings in several millions 
yearly, and employs many hundred 
hands, both for manufacturing and 
exportation. Kid, wax and muslin 
are the materials employed with such 
rare art and ingenuity. 


DATES. 


Dates are the fruit of a palm tree 
which abounds in Egypt, Barbary, 
Arabia, Persia, and other neighboring 
countries. It is a tall, majestic tree, 
and highly regarded in the East, both 
for its beauty and utility. It reaches 
the height of sixty feet, having a 
rugged trunk terminated with a tuft 
of leaves six or eight feet long. The 
flowers come out in large bunches 
from the trunk between the leaves, and 
produce a cluster of oval berries with 
a thick, sweet pulp, and enclosing a 
hard, oblong stone, which has a furrow 
on one side. When quite ripe, these 
berries are soft and of a red color. 
They are gathered and formed into a 
hard mass or cake by pressing them 
into large baskets, containing about 
two hundred pounds. In this form 
the fruit is exported. In retail trade, 
it is cut out of the baskets and sold by 
the pound. From the leaves are made 
baskets, bags, mats and brushes. The 
trunk is used for timber, and the 
fibrous mass at the base of the leaves 
is twisted into cordage, and employed 
in rigging small vessels. 


ICEBERGS. 


Few sights in nature are more im¬ 
posing than that of the huge, solitary 
iceberg, as, regardless alike of wind 
and tide, it steers its course across the 
face of the deep, far away from land. 
Like one of the frost giants of Scandi¬ 
navian mythology, it issues from the 
portals of the North, armed with great 
blocks of stone. Proudly it sails on. 
The waves that dash in foam against 
its sides shake not the strength of its 
crystal walls, nor tarnish the sheen of 
its emerald caves. Sleet and snow, 
storm and tempest, are its congenial 
elements. Night falls around, and the 
stars are reflected tremulously from a 
thousand peaks, and from the green 
depths of “ caverns measureless to 
man.” 

The visible portion of an iceberg is 
only about one-ninth part of the real 
bulk of the whole mass; so that if 
one be seen 190 feet high, the lowest 
part may, perhaps, be away down 1,800 
feet below the waves. Now it is easy 
to see that such a moving island will 
often grate across the summit and 
along the sides of the submarine hills ; 
and when the lower part of the berg 
is roughened over with earth stones, 
the surface of the rock over which it 
passes will be torn up and dispersed, 
or smoothed and striated, while the 
boulders embedded in the ice will be 
striated in turn. But some icebergs 
have been seen rising 300 feet over the 
sea; and these, if their submarine 
portions sank to the maximum depth, 
must have reached the enormous total 
height of 2,700 feet. By such a mass, 
any rock or mountain-top existing 
2,400 feet below the surface of the 
ocean would be polished and grooved ; 
and succeeding bergs depositing mud 
I and boulders upon it, this smoothed 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


371 


surface might be covered up and suffer 
no change until the ocean bed should 
be slowly upheaved to the light of 
day. In this way submarine rock sur¬ 
faces at all depths, from the coast-line 
down to 2,000 or 3,000 feet, may be 
scratched and polished, and eventually 
entombed in mud. It is upon this 
theory only that we are able to account 
for the many huge boulders that lie 
scattered about upon the mountain, 
valley and plain. 


DRESDEN PORCELAIN. 

Many readers will be astonished at 
the statement that no porcelain was 
ever made at Dresden. The celebrated 
factory always was, and still is, 
situated at Meissen, on the Elbe, a 
good twelve miles from the capital of 
Saxony. Augustus II., the ruler of 
the Electorate, and chosen King of 
Poland, was a money-loving prince,— 
not to keep cash, but to spend it with 
lavish liberality, and constantly on the 
look-out how to increase his revenues. 
Fortunately, instead of fleecing his 
subjects for this otherwise laudable 
purpose, as many of his compeers did, 
he tried to develop the natural 
resources of his dominions. First, he 
engaged the Count of Tsehirnhaus, a 
celebrated philosopher and scholar at 
the time, and set him to work to intro¬ 
duce some manufacture which could 
fill his exchequer. But soon he found 
this process too slow, and wished for 
some adept or necromancer who was to 
change stones into gold. There were 
many of the Dousterswivel tribe 
roving about Germany, and one of 
them found his way into Saxony. 
Jean Frederick Bottger, with whose 
name the invention of hard-paste 
porcelain in Europe is connected, was 
born at Schleitz, in 1682. His father, 


a master of mint there, apprenticed 
his son to an apothecary in Berlin. 
But an honest trade did not suit young 
Bottger’s tastes. He gave himself up 
to the study of secret sciences, and was 
appointed royal alchemist by William 
I., of Prussia. Of course he could not 
satisfy the expectations of his royal 
patron, and after a time took flight to 
Wittemberg. Here he was arrested, 
but his extradition was refused by the 
Elector of Saxony, who was delighted 
to get hold of the celebrated adept. 
Augustus II. had Bottger conducted to 
Dresden under military escort, put him 
in confinement, and fed him well for 
three years, to seek for the philoso¬ 
pher’s stone. No result nor benefit 
rewarded the patience of the Elector. 
Of the sixty million ducats which 
Bottger had promised to his princely 
dupe, not a single piece appeared, and 
in 1705 the unsuccessful adept took 
again to his heels, and fled to Ems, in 
Austria. Brought back to Dresden, 
he had to continue his experimental 
labors in durance vile, and ultimately 
succeeded in producing a fine red 
stoneware, resembling jasper or agate. 
Specimens of this kind — busts, coffee 
and tea ware, polished by the lapidary, 
and decorated with Chinese designs in 
gold and silver leaf—are not unfre- 
quently met with. They generally 
bear a Chinese mark impressed, and 
are distinguishable by their weight, 
from the similar Boukhara stoneware. 
In 1708 Count Tsehirnhaus died, and 
the year after Bottger discovered 
kaolin in his hair-powder, and the 
method of making white porcelain. 
The first piece, a white plate of 
Bottger’s manufacture, is still pre¬ 
served in the Japanese Museum at 
Dresden, and marked with King Au¬ 
gustus’ monogram. 

The kaolin in Bottger s powder-box 






372 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


turned out to come from Aue, in the 
Erzgebirge, where Hans Schorr, an 
iron master, had discovered the same 
by accident. 

Augustus the Strong now (1710) 
proceeded to establish a great porce¬ 
lain manufactory on the Albrechts- 
burg at Meissen, and Bottger was 
nominated technical director, but still 
kept under lock and key. It took 
three more years to bring the inven¬ 
tion to perfection, and in 1713 the 
first painted and enameled porcelain 
of Meissen, appeared at the Leipsic 
fair. Bottger was now liberated, after 
sixteen years’ captivity in more or less 
gilded prisons; but his constitution 
was undermined by fast living, and he 
died on March 13, 1719. 

After Bottger’s death, Horoldt of 
Jena was appointed director, and un¬ 
der him the artistic development of 
the Meissen works steadily progressed. 
Magnificent services, elaborately paint¬ 
ed gilt, as well as vases, were turned 
out. 

In 1731, Augustus constituted him¬ 
self nominal director of his pet fac¬ 
tory, and to this so-called King’s 
period, extending over thirty-two 
years, until the Elector’s death in 
1763, belong the finest productions 
of the Meissen porcelain works. 

The famous Count Bruhl, who kept 
1,500 suits of clothes, with wigs and 
snuff-boxes to match, was appointed 
administrator, and brought his extrava¬ 
gant but by no means unrefined taste 
to bear upon the royal factory. 

Prior to Bottger’s invention, the 
King had spent fabulous sums for 
Oriental porcelain. To Frederic Will¬ 
iam of Prussia, he handed over a 
whole regiment of dragoons in ex¬ 
change for twenty-two monster vases, 
and ordered porcelain services in 
China, decorated with the arms of 


Saxony and Poland, to the value of 
one million of thalers. Now that he 
could produce porcelain in his own 
dominions, his liberality in giving 
away knew no bounds. He presented 
the Countesses of Kosel and Donhoff, 
his favorites, with the choicest ser¬ 
vices, and every court in Europe re¬ 
ceived magnificent gifts in Mossien 
porcelain. To collect specimens of 
vieux Saxe became a mania with the 
fashionable world of Europe. The 
most heterogeneous articles of artistic 
church and household furniture, such 
as candelabras, organs^ clock-stands, 
buttons, tables, violins, mirror and 
picture-frames, even coffins, were made 
of porcelain. 

But what perpetuated the fame of 
the Meissen works were the figurines 
modeled by Joachim Kandler, between 
1731 and 1775. All the innumerable 
vases, figures, groups and animals, 
which are still the delight of connois¬ 
seurs for their life-like imitation of 
nature and faultless decoration, ema¬ 
nated from the hands of this clever 
artist. Nothing was too great or too 
little for Kandler to undertake to 
model, from the colossal equestrian 
statue of his Master and the Twelve 
Apostles, all life size, to the charming 
figurines a la Wattern, the Skye Ter¬ 
rier of the Porcelain King, the Pet 
Dogs of Catherine II., and the minute 
Pug — the latter still reproduced in 
countless numbers from the old mod¬ 
els. Celebrated sets were the Monkey 
Orchestra and the Carnival of Venice, 
escorted by upwards of a hundred 
different and independent figurines, 
representing the various professions 
and trades — two carts, each drawn 
by four horses, full of masked person¬ 
ages, and the centre formed by a 
large clock with rococo scrolls. 

Kandler likewise modeled a whole 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


373 


menagerie of animals of life size, of 
which, according to Mr. Chaffers, Lord 
Hastings, at Melton Constable, pos¬ 
sesses the most complete collection. 

The members of the Handler men¬ 
agerie have become so rare, that some 
of them were not even recognized by 
the cunning London dealers when 
offered for sale at a second-rate auc¬ 
tion some years ago. They were 
knocked down for a mere trifle, to 
the great benefit of the adventurous 
buyer. 

The price Meissen porcelain com¬ 
manded in England, even at the time 
of its manufacture, may be gathered 
from an article in the London Maga¬ 
zine of May, 1753: it says, “ Table 
services may be had from 100 to 1,000 
guineas, according to the quantity, size, 
and nature of the painting they are 
composed of. Those most commonly 
bought are about the value of 160 or 
200 guineas. The plates are from 8s. 
to 24s.; and the tureens, dishes, bowls, 
etc., according to their bigness, etc. 
The sets of porcelain for tea, coffee 
and chocolate may be had from 15 to 
60 guineas. The single figures, about 
15 in. high, are rated at from 10 to 20 
guineas, and those of 5 or 6 inches in 
as many pounds. When they exceed 
these sizes, the figures grow dearer. 

At the present day a fine old Dres¬ 
den figure is considered cheap at 40 
and 50 guineas, and large groups are 
purchased for hundreds of pounds. 

Entirely white porcelain, without 
decoration, was the most esteemed 
during the King’s period, and reserved 
for the Elector’s use, or for presents 
to foreign princes. Specimens of this 
white porcelain, engraved with a dia¬ 
mond, by Baro Busch, Canon of 
ITildesheim, are eagerly sought for by 
collectors, and bring exhorbitant 
prices. The Duke of Brunswick pos¬ 


sesses a whole service of it, valued at 

£ 10 , 000 . 

About 1754, Ernst Dietrich, of Wei¬ 
mar, or Dietrici, as he called himself, 
became director of the Meissen porce¬ 
lain works, and engaged the principal 
artists of rival factories — Lusch, of 
Frankenthal, Breicheisen, of Vienna, 
and the French sculptor, Francois 
Acier. The latter introduced the 
Sevres style of decoration. The supe¬ 
riority of colors, however, which had 
characterized the Meissen works during 
the first half of the eighteenth centu¬ 
ry, in comparison with the French 
porcelain, could not be kept up any 
longer. 

Towards 1774, until 1814, the Count 
Marcolini took the place of Dietrici, 
and, under his direction, the well-estab¬ 
lished fame of the royal works was 
well sustained — to be, as it seems, 
irretrievably lost after Marcolini’s 
death, under Von Oppel (1814 to 1833), 
and Kahn, his successor. With mod¬ 
ern Dresden we have nothing to do ; 
it is so much inferior, in every way, to 
vieux Saxe, that it does not deserve 
the attention of collectors. 

Meissen or Dresden porcelain bears 
a variety of marks, all in blue, under 
the glaze. The oldest seems to have 
been the monogram A. R., signifying 
Augustus Rex. It was affixed to 
pieces intended for royal use, between 
1709 and 1712. This mark is likewise 
found on specimens of modern origin, 
which, however, by their inferior 
decoration, are easily distinguished 
from the old models. In rare cases, 
the monogram is surmounted by 
a crown. 

The caduceous mark was used be¬ 
tween 1712 and 1720, on pieces in¬ 
tended for sale, and made under the 
direction of Bottger. 

Horold appears to have introduced 





374 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the Electoral swords as marks. They 
occur as early as 1716, and continue 
to be used as the principal mark on 
Dresden porcelain all through the 
eighteenth century. 

Specimens made during the King’s 
period (1731 —1763) are generally 
marked with a dot between the 
crossed swords, and considered as the 
most valuable by collectors. 

The same mark was used during the 
direction of Dietrich, 1763 —1774; 
and under Marbolini, 1774 —1814, a 
star was sustained for the dot. 

The initials M. P. M. and K. P. M., 
which sometimes are found on old 
Dresden porcelain, but more fre¬ 
quently on specimens of modern 
“make, signify “Meissner Porcellan 
Manufactur,” and “ Konigliche Por¬ 
cellan Manufactur.” 

Pieces which have been sold in the 
white state, or specimens spoilt in the 
firing, are marked with one or more 
cuts in the glaze, above or through 
the crossed swords, and may therefore 
easily be distingushed from pieces 
painted by Dresden artists. 

A special mark was used for a ser¬ 
vice made expressly for the King’s 
favorite, the Countess Kosel, but 
specimens are hardly ever offered for 
sale. 

The Dresden mark of crossed swords 
has been frequently copied by other 
porcelain manufacturers,— as by Locre 
de la Courtille, Jacob Petit, and M. 
Cloos, of Paris. 

In England, nearly every china fac¬ 
tory forged this celebrated mark. It 
is most frequently found on Bristol, 
Worcester and Derby porcelain, and 
occasionally on Colebrookdale, and 
other inferior Staffordshire china. 

The Dresden manufactory itself 
uses all the old marks for its com¬ 
paratively valueless modern porcelain, 


and a collector is utterly lost if he 
relies only on marks, and does not 
take into consideration style and fin¬ 
ish of modeling and decoration. 

The surest safeguard, however, 
against mistakes and deceptions re¬ 
mains— the artistic feeling which 
cannot be taught, but only acquired 
by long experience, and by comparing 
undoubted old specimens with modern 
imitations. A connoisseur detects the 
difference at a glance, whilst a tyro 
generally picks out the wretched for¬ 
gery for its glaring colors and brighter 
aspect. 


ORIGIN OF THE DOLLAR MARK. 

A writer in the Atlantic Monthly 
has a curious paper on the origin of 
the dollar symbol, ($). In brief, his 
theory is, that the two upright marks 
may be traced back to the pillars of 
Hercules, and the S-like figure is the 
scroll entwined around them. Accord¬ 
ing to tradition, when the Tyrian 
colony landed on the Atlantic coast of 
Spain, and founded the ancient city 
of Gades, now Cadiz, Melcarthus, the 
leader of the expedition, set up two 
stone pillars as memorials, over which 
was built a temple of Hercules. As 
the temple increased in wealth, the 
stone pillars were replaced hy others, 
made of an alloy of gold and silver, 
and these two pillars became, in time, 
the emblem of the city, as a horse’s 
head became that of Carthage. 
Centuries later, when Charles V. be¬ 
came Emperor of Germany, he adopted 
a new coat of arms, in which the 
pillars of Gades or Cadiz occupied a 
prominent position in the device. 
Hence, when a new coin, the collonna- 
to, was struck at the imperial mint, it 
bore the new device — two pillars, 
Avith a scroll entwined around them. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


375 


This coin became a standard of value 
in the Mediterranean, and the pillars 
and scroll became its accepted symbol 
in writing. 

The two horizontal bars which cross 
the symbol of the English pound 
sterling, are also thought to have a 
similar origin. In the same paper, the 
symbolic origin of the pillars of 
Hercules is traced far back into the 
remote era prior to the dispersion of 
the human race from its Asiatic birth¬ 
place. They are identified with the 
household pillars of the Scandinavians, 
and the idea from which the concrete 
embodiments spring, is to be found 
alike in the Sanscrit Aedas, and in the 
glowing imagery of the Hebrew poets. 
They are the symbols of day and 
night, or light and darkness, which, to 
the dawning intelligence ot the Arian 
races, were evidences of the Omnipo¬ 
tent, and to the Jewish patriarchs, the 
work of a revealed Creator. 


SENSATION OF STARVING. 

For the first few days through 
which a strong and healthy man is 
doomed to exist upon nothing, his 
sufferings are perhaps more acute 
than in the remaining states — he 
feels an inordinate, unspeakable crav¬ 
ing at the stomach, night and day. 
The mind runs upon beef, bread, 
and other substantial, but still, in 
a great measure, the body retains its 
strength. On the third and fourth 
days, but especially on the fourth, 
this incessant craving gives place 
to a sinking and weakness of the 
stomach, accompanied by a nausea. 
The unfortunate sufferer still desires 
food, but with loss of strength ; he 
loses that eager craving which is felt 
in the earlier stages. Should he 
chance to obtain a morsel or two of 


food, he swallows it with a wxdfish 
avidity; but five minutes afterward 
his sufferings are more intense than 
ever. He feels as if he had swallowed 
a living lobster, which is clawing and 
feeding upon the very foundation of 
his existence. On the fifth day his 
cheeks suddenly become hollow and 
sunken, his body attenuated, his color 
is ashy pale, and his eye wild, glassy, 
cannibalish. The different parts, of 
the system now war with each otner. 
The stomach calls upon the legs to 
go with it in quest of food ; the legs, 
from very weakness, refuse. The 
sixth day brings with it increased 
suffering, although the pangs of hun¬ 
ger are lost in an overpowering lan¬ 
guor and sickness. The head becomes 
giddy — the ghosts of well-remem¬ 
bered dinners pass in hideous proces¬ 
sion through the mind. The seventh 
day comes, bringing an increased 
lassitude and further prostration of 
strength. The arms hang lifelessly, the 
legs drag heavily. The desire of food 
is still left, to a degree, but it must be 
brought, not sought. The miserable 
remnant of life which still hangs to 
the sufferer, is a burden almost too 
grievous to be borne; yet his inher¬ 
ent love of his existence induces a 
desire still to preserve it, if it can be 
saved without a tax upon bodily exer¬ 
tion. The mind wanders. At one 
moment he thinks his weary limbs 
cannot sustain him a mile, the next 
he is endowed with unnatural 
strength, and if there be a certainty 
of relief before him, dashes bravely 
and strongly forward, wondering 
whence proceeds his new and sudden 
impulse. 

Cannon first used at the siege of 
Algeziras, 1342. Muskets in use, 
1370. Pistols in use, 1544. 












376 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


THE WISDOM OF THE EGYPTIANS. 


The moderns are accustomed to 
pooh-pooh a good deal at people so 
unfortunate as to live before this nine¬ 
teenth century; but just think what 
some of these remote people and times 
did manage to tind out and accomplish 
for themselves. There was Egypt — 
oldest and wisest of the nations—what 
a record for her is deciphered, in the 
last fifty years of her past. 

What did the old Egyptian know 
about the oldest of the arts—about 
farming P He knew how to manage 
his great river—the one source of 
moisture and fertility in that climate 
— so as to turn the desert beyond its 
banks into a garden, and make Egypt 
a storehouse and granary for the sur¬ 
rounding nations. He built reser¬ 
voirs so huge as to retain sufficient 
water from the overflowing river to 
feed it when it subsided — a lake four 
hundred and fifty miles around and 
three hundred feet deep — and this 
fitted up with a skillful system of 
floodgates, dams and locks. These 
were water-works on a stupendous 
scale, truly. 

As to what he knew about build¬ 
ing, who has not heard of his 
pyramids, those vast masses, some 
of which were old in the time 
of Abraham, and yet built with 
such faithfulness and skill, that the 
masonry is still perfect ? He knew 
how to quarry and move huge 
blocks of stone, ninety feet in length, 
and then cover them with accurate 
and beautiful chiseling. The whole 
land was full of these wonderful 
statues, obelisks, tombs and temples. 

About manufacturing, he knew how 
to weave linen so fine that each sepa¬ 
rate thread was composed of three 
hundred and sixty-five small threads 


twisted together. He knew how to 
ji dye it in purple, and blue, and scarlet, 
! and how to embroider it. He knew 
how to get iron and copper from 
mines at Sinai, and how to make 
useful tools of them when obtained. 

But what did he know about sci¬ 
ence ? He understood geometry well 
enough, at least, for land surveying. 
He understood the rotundity of the 
earth, the sun's central place in the 
solar system, the obliquity of the 
ecliptic. He could foretell eclipses, 
the position of the planets, the true 
length of the year. He had found 
out a method of notation — two of 
them indeed, the decimal, and the duo¬ 
decimal. As for chemistry, its very 
name (from Chemi, which means 
Egypt) tells us where it was first 
studied. No wonder that the Egyp¬ 
tians got the reputation, among their 
more ignorant neighbors, of being 
magicians. As for books, the old 
Egyptians made paper and wrote on 
it, and we have now papyrus rolls 
made in the time of the early Pha¬ 
raohs ; but he went on further to turn 
his buildings, his obelisks, even his 
coffins, into books, inscribing them 
with histories and biographies, by 
representing on . them, through 
paintings and sculpture, all his occu¬ 
pations and beliefs, his hopes and 
fears. 

One asks in wonder where he got 
all this knowledge. Ancient Greece 
went to him for it, just as the Amer¬ 
ican goes to Germany. We can trace 
the germs, at least, of our science and 
art to nations removed from us by 
ages; but whom did the Egyptians 
learn from P Were these sons of Ham 
the first to develop to such a marvel¬ 
ous degree the arts of life ? Did they 
find out by original observation what 
has been transmitted to us ? And 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


377 


through what remote antiquity were 
they slowly accumulating the experi¬ 
ence which qualified them to establish 
such stable institutions, such settled 
traditions, such attainments in science 
and art ? 

No one can tell. At a point beyond 
our furthest traditions, her records 
show her to us rich, powerful, cultiva¬ 
ted, skillful. Of the long ages before 
she was able to record her changes, 
time has long obliterated all traces. 
The world had long forgotten all 
about her, till the researches of the 
last half-century brought to light her 
long-buried life. Strange enough it 
is to be brought face to face with 
the monuments of a civilization com¬ 
pared to which all European history is 
but of yesterday — which was old in 
the days of Abraham — and to find 
there so much in common with our 
own. 


A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. 

One hundred and ten years ago 
there was not a single white man in 
what is now Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, 
or Illinois. Then, what is now the 
most flourishing part of the United 
States was as little known as the 
heart of Africa itself. 

It was not till 1766 that Boone left 
his home in North Carolina to become 
the first settler in Kentucky. And 
the first pioneers of Ohio did not set¬ 
tle till twenty years later still. A 
hundred years ago Canada belonged to 
France, and Washington was a modest 
Virginian Colonel, and the United 
States the most loyal part of the Brit¬ 
ish Empire, and scarcely a speck on 
the political horizon indicated the 
struggle that in a score of years was 
to lay the foundation of the greatest 
Republic in the world. 


A hundred years ago there were but 
four small newspapers in America; 
steam engines had not been imagined, 
and locomotives, and steamboats, and 
railroads, and telegraphs, and postal 
cards, and friction matches, and re¬ 
volvers, and percussion caps, and 
breech-loading guns, and stoves and 
furnaces, and gas for dwellings, and 
India rubber shoes, and Spaulding’s 
glue, and sewing machines, and an¬ 
thracite coal, and photographs, and 
ehromo paintings, and kerosene oil, 
and the safety lamp, and the com¬ 
pound blow-pipe, and free-schools, and 
spring-mattresses, and wood engrav¬ 
ings, and Brussels carpet, and lever 
watches, and greenbacks, and cotton 
and woolen factories, in anything like 
the present meaning of these terms, 
were utterly unknown. 

A hundred years ago the spinning- 
wheel was in almost every family, and 
clothing was spun and woven and made 
up in the household, and the printing 
press was a cumbrous machine worked 
by hand; and a nail, or a brick, or a 
knife, or a pair of shears or scissors, or a 
razor, or a woven pair of stockings, or 
an ax, or hoe, or shovel, or a lock, or a 
key, or a plate of glass of any size, was 
not made in what is now the United 
States. Even in 1790 there were only 
seventy-five postoffices in the country, 
and the whole extent of our post routes 
was less than 1,900 miles. Cheap post¬ 
age was unheard of, and had any one 
suggested transmission of messages 
with lightning speed he would have 
been thought utterly insane. The mi¬ 
croscope, on the one hand, and the tel¬ 
escope on the other, were in their in¬ 
fancy as instruments of science; and 
geology and chemistry were almost un¬ 
known. In a word, it is true that to 
the century passed have been allotted 
more improvements, in their bearing 







378 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


on the comfort and happiness of man¬ 
kind, than to any other which has 
elapsed since the creation of the world. 


SAFES. 

Fire proof safes are comparatively a 
modern invention. In 1707 the valu¬ 
ables and crown jewels of Scotland 
were deposited in an oaken chest. Its 
lid was secured by three locks. In 
1818 the locks were forced open because 
the keys could not be found. Old cash 
and deed chests of this kind were 
elaborately carved and strengthened by 
iron bands. They were considered 
secure, as they were fastened by a 
number of bolts in a single lock or by 
several padlocks. During the last 
century, there were metallic safes con¬ 
sisting of iron frames covered with 
sheet-iron and hoop-iron crossed at 
right angles on the outside and riveted 
through to give it more strength. In 
1801 there was a patent issued in En¬ 
gland to Richard Scott. It consisted 
of an inner and outer casing of iron 
or other metal, between which was an 
interspace on all sides filled in with 
charcoal or wood, treated with a solu¬ 
tion of alkaline salt. The next patent 
was granted to William Marr in 1834. 
He introduced a second metallic lining 
so as to form two interspaces within 
the safe, the inner of which was lined 
with mica and filled in with a non¬ 
conducting material. There was a 
variety of materials used at this time, 
such as clay, lime, graphite and asbes¬ 
tos. Since that time there have been 
an endless number of patents issued to 
inventors for burglar, fire, and water¬ 
proof safes, each claiming some new 
combination of materials whereby they 
will more effectually resist the attempts 
of burglars as well as the action of fire 
and water. 


ANCIENT VESSELS. 


Magnificent and large as are some- 
of our modern steam vessels, they are 
inferior, if we may judge from the 
description, both in size and splendor, 
to the vessels constructed by the kings 
of Egypt and Syracuse, on a scale of 
grandeur corresponding to the im¬ 
mense preparations of their sculpture 
and architecture. Ptolemseus Philo- 
pater, King of Egypt, built a vessel 420 
feet long, 56 feet broad, 72 feet high 
from the keel to the top of the prow, 
and 80 feet to the top of the poop. 
She had four helms of 60 feet; her 
largest oars were 56 feet long, with 
leaden handles, so as to work more 
easily by the rowers; she had two 
prows, two sterns, seven rostra or 
breaks, successfully rising and swell¬ 
ing out one over the other, the top¬ 
most one most prominent and stately ; 
on the poop and prow she had figures 
of animals not less than 18 feet high ; 
all the interior of the vessel was beau¬ 
tified with a delicate sort of painting 
of a waxen color. She had 4,000 row¬ 
ers, 400 cabin boys or servants; ma¬ 
rines to do duty on the decks, 2,820; 
with an immense store of arms and 
provisions. The same Prince built 
another ship, called the Thalamegus, 
or Bedchamber ship, which was only 
used as a pleasure yacht for sailing up 
and down the Nile. She was not so 
long or large as the preceding one, but 
more splendid in the chambers and 
their furnishings. Hiero, King of Sy¬ 
racuse, built an enormous vessel, which 
he intended for a corn-trader; her 
length is not given. She was built at 
Syracuse, by a Corinthian shipbuilder, 
and was launched by an apparatus 
devised by Archimedes. All her bolts 
and nails were of brass; she had 
twenty rows of oars; her apartments 








379 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


were all paved with neat, square, 
variegated tiles, on which was painted 
all the story of Homer’s Iliad. 

She had a gymnasium, with shady 
walks, on her upper decks, garden plots 
stocked with various plants, and nour¬ 
ished with limpid water that flowed 
circulating round them in a canal of 
lead. She had here and there on deck, 
arbors mantled with ivy and vine 
branches, which flourished in full 
greenness, being supplied with the 
principle of growth from the leaden 
canal. She had one chamber particu¬ 
larly splendid, whose pavement was of 
agate and other precious stones, and 
whose panels, doors and roofs were of 
ivory and wood of the thya tree. She 
had a scholasterium, or library, with 
five couches, its roof arched into a 
polus or vault, with the stars embossed; 
she had a bath, with its accompani¬ 
ments, all most magnificent; she had 
on each side of her deck ten stalls for 
horses, with fodder and furnishings for 
the grooms and riders; a fish-pond of 
lead, full of fish, whose waters could be 
let out or admitted at pleasure; she 
had two towers on the poop, two on 
the prow, and four in the middle, full 
of armed men, that managed the ma¬ 
chines invented by Archimedes for 
throwing stones of three hundred 
pounds weight and arrows eighteen 
feet long to the distance of a furlong. 
She had three masts, and two antennas 
or yards, that swung with hooks and 
masses of lead attached. She had round 
the whole circuit of her deck, a ram¬ 
part of iron with iron screws, which 
took hold of ships and dragged them 
nearer, for the purpose of destroying 
them. The tunnels or bowls on her 
masts were of brass, with men in each. 

She had twelve anchors and three 
masts. It was with difficulty they 
could find a tree large and strong 


enough for her highest mast. Great 
Britain—an ominous circumstance for 
the superiority of British oak !—had 
the glory of bestowing upon her a suf¬ 
ficient tree for that purpose. It was 
discovered among the recesses of Albi¬ 
on's forests by a swineherd ! What is 
remarkable in the construction of this 
gigantic vessel, is that her sentina, or 
sink, though large and deep, was emp¬ 
tied by one man by means of a pump 
invented bv Archimedes. Hiero, on 
finding that the Syracusan was too un¬ 
wieldy to be admitted with safety into 
the harbors of Sicily, made a present of 
her to Ptolemy, who changed her name 
to the Alexandrian. Archemelus, the 
Greek epigrammatist, wrote a poem on 
the large vessel, which was rewarded 
by Hiero with a present to its talented 
author of one thousand measures of 
corn—a premium proportioned, if not 
to the poem, at least to the magnitude 
of the theme celebrated. 


SCREWS.—TO MAKE THEM HOLD. 

Screws may be made to hold in soft 
wood, or where the cut has become too 
large, by the use of glue. Prepare the 
glue thick, immerse a stick about half 
the size of the screw and put it into 
the hole, then immerse the screw and 
drive it home as quick as possible. 
When there is some article of furni¬ 
ture to be repaired, and no glue is to be 
had handily, insert the stick and fill 
the rest of the cavity with pulverized 
rosin, then heat the screw sufficient to 
melt the rosin as it is driven in. 
Chairs, tables, lounges, etc., are con¬ 
tinually getting out of order in every 
house, and the time to repair them is 
when the break is first noticed. If 
neglected, the matter grows still worse, 
and finally results in the laying by of 
the article of furniture as worthless. 









380 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


AMERICAN WONDERS. 


The greatest cataract is the Falls of 
Niagara, where the water from the 
great Upper Lakes forms a river of 
three-quarters of a mile in width, and 
then, being suddenly contracted, plun¬ 
ges over the rocks in two columns, to 
the depth of one hundred and seventy 
feet each. 

The greatest cave in the world is 
the Mammoth Cave, in Kentucky, 
where any one can make a voyage on 
the waters of a subterranean river, 
and catch fish without eyes. 

The greatest river in the world is 
the Mississippi, four thousand one 
hundred miles long. 

The largest valley in the world is 
the Valley of the Mississippi. It con¬ 
tains five hundred thousand square 
miles, and is one of the most fertile 
and profitable regions on the globe. 

The largest lake in the world is 
Lake Superior, which truly is an in¬ 
land sea, being four hundred and 
thirty miles long, and one thousand 
feet deep. 

The longest railroad in the world is 
the Pacific Railroad, over three thou¬ 
sand miles in length. 

The greatest natural bridge in the 
world is the Natural Bridge over 
Cedar Creek, in Virginia. It extends 
across a chasm eighty feet in width 
and two hundred and fifty feet in 
depth, at the bottom of which the 
creek flows. 

The greatest mass of solid iron in 
the world is the great Iron Mountain 
in Missouri. It is three hundred and 
fifty feet high, and two miles in circuit. 

The largest deposits of anthracite 
coal in the world, are in Pennsylvania, 
the mines of which supply the market 
with millions of tons annually, and 
appear to be inexhaustible. 


ODD MINUTES OF WAITING. 


While you are arranging the parlor, 
just have a thought for the visitors 
who must sometimes wait to see you, 
and carefully refrain from putting 
every object of interest beyond their 
reach. Of course, as a careful 
hostess, you never mean to keep 
callers waiting; but if they come 
when the baby is on the eve of drop¬ 
ping to sleep, or you are in the midst 
of planning dinner with the cook, 
you must delay a little, while they are 
reduced to staring out of the window, 
or to any involuntary effort to pene¬ 
trate some insignificant household 
secret. The family photograph album 
is usually regarded as a sufficient 
resource in moments like these ; but 
is there not something akin to indeli¬ 
cacy in allowing strangers and ordi¬ 
nary acquaintances to turn over the 
likenesses of our nearest and dearest— 
perhaps to criticise them with the 
freedom of unfamiliarity, or the 
unsympathy natural to lack of per¬ 
sonal appreciation. The late magazines, 
a volume of poetry, a stereoscope and 
views, photographs of foreign scenes, 
and a dozen other things, are all good 
aids to the occupation of stray 
minutes. Moreover, they often sug¬ 
gest to the visitor and the host topics 
of conversation more profitable and 
interesting than the state of the 
weather or the history of the kitchen. 


TIE LION’S FEAR OF MAN. 

Lichenstein says that African hun¬ 
ters avail themselves of the circum¬ 
stance that the lion does not spring 
upon his prey till he has measured the 
ground, and has reached the distance 
of ten or twelve paces, where he lies 
crouching upon the ground, gathering 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


381 


himself for the effort. The hunters, 
he says, make it a rule never to fire 
upon the lion till he lies down at this 
short distance, so that they can aim 
directly at the head with the most per¬ 
fect certainty. He adds that if a per¬ 
son has the misfortune to meet a lion, 
his only hope of safety is to stand 
perfectly still, even though the ani¬ 
mal crouches to make a spring — that 
spring will not be hazarded if the man 
has only nerve enough to remain 
motionless as a statue, and look steadi¬ 
ly at the lion. The animal hesitates, 
es slowly, retreats some steps, look¬ 
ing earnestly about him, lies down, 
again retreats, till having thus by de¬ 
grees got quite out of what he seems 
to feel as the magic circle of man’s 
influence, he takes flight in the utmost 
haste. 


SILK IN ENGLAND. 

There was, as we glean from chroni¬ 
clers, a company of silk women in 
London as early as 1355 ; but these 
would appear to have been employed 
in works executed by the needle, 
either by sewing on some other mate¬ 
rial, or by knitting. Such goods being 
those which are now called small 
wares, were secured against'the impor¬ 
tation of certain foreign articles for 
five years. In 1453, this protection 
was further extended to other articles, 
such as “laces, ribands, and fringes of 
silk, silk embroidery, tires of silk, 
purses, and girdles.” In 1482, this 
act expired, and as the makers of silk 
goods were speedily thrown out of 
employment, four years more were 
given them. 

Twenty-two years later, certain 
goods were still restricted, whilst all 
raw materials were left free, together 
with such goods as the English did 


not know how to manufacture ; for it 
was not until the latter end of the 
reign of James I. that the manufact¬ 
ure of broad silks had a fair start, and 
then, in 1689, the silk-throwsters of 
London were incorporated under the 
style and title of masters, wardens, 
assistants, and commonalty of silk- 
throwsters. 

War and religious persecution, as 
carried on by our continental neigh¬ 
bors, really laid the foundation of the 
silk trade in England, and subse¬ 
quently tended to support and develop 
it. The Duke of Parma, having taken 
Antwerp, in 1585, exercised his right 
as conqueror and governor of the 
Spanish Netherlands, to give up that 
city to three days’ plunder and de¬ 
struction. The result was that all fled 
who could do so, many with nothing 
for the future but their skill in manu¬ 
factures. It is stated that a third part 
of the merchants and workmen 
engaged in the silk trade fled to En¬ 
gland, and there finally settled, while 
the commerce of the Low Countries, 
and the manufactures of Flanders and 
Brabant became almost extinct. 

The manufacture of broad silks and 
the rich tissues may date from this 
period, since it had now gained a foot¬ 
ing, in a practical sense, and soon 
obtained the occasional patronage of 
royalty, and the still more stringent 
support of Protection Acts of Parlia¬ 
ment — two modes of progressing 
trade, to which there is still a strong 
hereditary leaning to this day existent 
in Spitalfields. Even at this early 
period, when the trade could scarcely 
have got a more firm and extended 
footing in France than it had in this 
country, except that the French had 
already solved the problem of growing 
their own silk, complaints were made 
of the fashion tending to the encour- * 









382 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


agement of the foreigner; for it was 
stated, as matter of grave moment, that 
“ women’s hats were trimmed with 
hoods made of French silk, whereby 
every maid-servant became a standing 
revenue to the French King, of one- 
lialf her wages.’’ Perhaps the silk 
hoods, of this and subsequent modern 
periods, were the origin of the modern 
lady’s bonnet. 


HASHEESH AND ITS SMOKERS AND 

EATERS. 


The drowsy appearance and indolent 
character of Eastern nations is not 
only due to the climate of the coun¬ 
tries, and the almost spontaneous pro¬ 
duction by the earth of everything 
necessary for the life of man, thus in a 
great measure rendering labor unneces¬ 
sary, but it is aided and increased by 
the use of powerful narcotic drugs. 

The Chinese have their opium which 
they chew and smoke to great excess, 
as it produces a delicious dreamy sen¬ 
sation that is relished by the many 
inhabitants of that most conservative 
country. We have often seen the 
celestial cigar-sellers in this city look¬ 
ing with a bewildered stare at the pass¬ 
ing crowds, as if the noise of our bus¬ 
tling traffic was interfering with the 
sensations they sought to obtain from 
the opium they were smoking through 
bits of reed. The Ottomans — that is 
the nations inhabiting the north of 
Africa, the southwest of Asia and a por¬ 
tion of Europe—prefer the intoxication 
produced by hasheesh, which is a prepa¬ 
ration of the Indian hemp, and which 
they smoke under the names of kiff, 
hasheesh or tekhomi. 

The leaves of this plant are some¬ 
times fried in honey and butter to 
extract the active resinous portion, 
and this they eat, as we should gum 


drops. The first smokers and eaters of 
hasheesh were called haslieeshins, from 
which our word “assassin" is derived, 
and the custom was first practiced in 
the days of the Crusaders by a power¬ 
ful enemy of theirs, “ The Old Man of 
the Mountain,’’ as he was called, and 
who obtained the most implicit obedi¬ 
ence from many followers by supply¬ 
ing them with this drug. 

Its effect on the system is remarka¬ 
ble, and unlike that of opium, tobacco 
or alcohol. It immediately acts on 
the brain and nervous system, but 
does not stimulate the creative faculty, 
as does opium, and does not produce 
insensibility like alcohol, but while it 
allows its victim to be sensible to what 
is passing around, it intensifies sensa¬ 
tions, and enlarges and expands to a 
most miraculous degree the objects by 
which the person under its influence 
is surrounded. Thus a few yards 
seems the stretch of a desert, and a 
tree is magnified into a forest, then 
come short and pleasant dreams—the 
world ideal mingled with the world 
actual. Persons who are in the habit 
of using this drug usually terminate 
their existence as lunatics ; and since 
the French have had Algeria, their 
insane hospitals have been filled with 
the victims of hasheesh. 


IMITATION OF MARBLE. 

Imitations of marble are in great 
demand for ornamentation, and many 
different compounds are used for the 
purpose. Mr. Pichler, a gilder in 
Vienna, from his own experience, 
recommends the following composition 
as being simple and satisfactory : 

Into one pound of best joiner’s glue, 
boiled rather thick, half a pound of 
rosin (colophonium) is to be slowly 
stirred. (Instead of the rosin the 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


383 


same quantity of Venetian turpentine 
may be used.) Into this plastic mass 
is worked a mixture of powdered chalk, 
and of any mineral color of the de¬ 
sired shade, and after the addition of a 
little olive oil it is ready for moulding. 
It is sometimes convenient to have 
the material in the shape of thin 
sheets to be cut as required, and in this 
case the mass is rolled out upon a 
slightly heated plate. Mr. Pichler 
asserts that this composition hardens 
rapidly and can be easily polished. 
When kept for a length of time it 
should be wrapped in a moist sheet, 
and exposed to gentle heat before 
using. The variegated marble-like 
veins can also be produced by knead¬ 
ing together differently colored por¬ 
tions of this mass. 


A MODEL OF BREVITY. 

Secretary Seward’s will, which was 
written by his own hand at Pekin, 
China, November 5, 1870, is a model 
of clearness and brevity, reading as 
follows: 

In the name of God, Amen. 

I, William H. Seward, of Auburn, 
do make, ordain, publish, and declare 
this my last will and testament, 
hereby revoking all former wills by 
me made. 

First—I devise, grant and bequeath 
in fee simple in equal shares to my 
three sons, Augustus, Frederick and 
YY illiam, the house and real estate in 
Auburn in which I dwell. 

Second—I give, grant, devise and 
bequeath in fee simple absolute, all 
my remaining estate real and per¬ 
sonal, in equal shares, to my said 
three sons and my adopted daughter, 
Olive F. Risley, daughter of my old 
friend, Harrison A. Risley. 

Third—I appoint my son, William 
H. Seward, and my adopted daughter, 
the said Olive, executor and executrix. 

[l. s.] William H. Seward. 


WILD PLANTS DOMESTICATED. 


The cabbage is first cousin to cauli¬ 
flower, broccoli, etc., and they all 
come from the wild cabbage of the 
sea-coast. It is a marine plant, and 
loves salt and salt water. The wild 
cabbage is a tall, wavy, coarse plant, 
but the pods are now gathered and 
eaten in the Spring months in some 
parts of England. There is no plant 
which has produced by cultivation a 
greater number of varieties than the 
cabbage. We can extend the varie¬ 
ties much further, but it is sufficient 
for us to consider the wild range be¬ 
tween the little red cabbage for pick¬ 
ling, and the “mammoth,” with a 
head so large that it can only be boiled 
in a large caldron. In the cauliflower 
we eat the fleshy flower stalks and 
undeveloped buds, which are crowded 
together in a compact mass. It was a 
favorite saying of the great lexicogra¬ 
pher, Dr. Johnson : “ Of all the flow¬ 
ers of the garden, I like the cauli¬ 
flower the best; ” a sentiment worthy 
of this learned epicure. The numer¬ 
ous varieties of the cabbage illustrate 
in the most striking manner the 
changes which are produced in species 
by cultivation, and the permanence of 
some varieties of races. They also 
give us instructive lessons in the econo- 
my of vegetable life. 

The turnip comes from the wild 
plant found by the sides of the rivers, 
ditches and marshes. Like the cab¬ 
bage, it has produced several varieties, 
the result of long cultivation. From 
the wild plant we have the little flat 
turnip and the huge ruta baga , with 
all the varieties between. This root is 
now most widely cultivated as food for 
stock, and it has added much to the 
wealth of England. 

The parsnip is also a reclaimed wild 







384 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


plant, and it is difficult to say whether 
we are indebted to cultivation or im¬ 
portation for it; most probably the 
latter, as it is a native of Britain. If 
the wild plant is cultivated two or 
three years in rich garden soil, it ac¬ 
quires all the desirable characteristics 
of the best kinds; and if left to itself 
in poor soil, it speedily goes back into 
its wild, degenerate condition. Pars¬ 
nips appear to have been very early 
reclaimed from a wild state, for Plin}^ 
tells us that parsnips were cultivated 
on the banks of the Rhine, and were 
brought from them to supply the tables 
of the Roman Emperors. 


INVENTION OF THE TELESCOPE. 

Testimony as to the discovery of 
this instrument is somewhat conflict¬ 
ing. The general opinion appears to 
be, however, that the invention is due 
to Jansen, a spectacle-maker of Mid- 
dleburg, in Holland, about 1590. The 
discovery is said to have been made in 
the following curious manner: The 
children of Jansen, while playing in 
his shop, casually placed a concave and 
a convex glass in such a position that, 
by looking through them at the 
weathercock, it appeared much larger 
and nearer than usual. Their ex¬ 
clamations of surprise excited the 
attention of their father, who profited 
by the discovery, and soon obtained 
great credit for it. The celebrated 
Galileo, having in 1609, heard of this 
new optical instrument, made several 
improvements in it, and first employed 
it for astronomical observations. Sir 
Isaac Newton effected still further 
improvements, in 1663, and Dr. Hooke, 
Herschel, and the Earl of Rosse, have 
each contributed something towards 
the attainment of its present wonderful 
powers. 


ARTIFICIAL IVORY. 


By a simple process, artificial ivory 
is now produced from India rubber. 
Two pounds of pure rubber are dis¬ 
solved in thirty-two pounds of chloro¬ 
form, and the solution is then 
saturated with a current of ammonia 
gas. When the rubber has been com¬ 
pletely bleached, the admission of the 
gas interrupted, the mass is transferred 
to a vessel provided with a stirrer, in 
which it is washed with hot water 
until the bleaching agent has been 
entirely removed. The remaining 
product forms a kind of froth, which, 
being pressed out, dried, and again 
treated with a small quantity of chlo¬ 
roform, is finally obtained as a consist¬ 
ent paste. This paste is now mixed 
with a sufficient quantity of finely 
pulverized phosphate of lime, or car¬ 
bonate of zinc, until it assumes the 
appearance of moist flour. In this 
condition it is pressed in hot moulds, 
which it leaves sufficiently hal'd to be 
turned, planed, filed or bored. In 
order to imitate corals, pearls, enam¬ 
els, hard woods, etc., it is only neces¬ 
sary to mix the paste with the desired 
colors previously to its being com¬ 
pressed. 


BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENT ON SOUNB 


The following beautiful experiment, 
described by Prof. Tyndall, shows how 
music may be transmitted by an 
ordinary wooden rod. In a room two 
floors beneath his lecture-room there 
was a piano, upon which an artist was 
playing, but the audience could not 
hear it. A rod of deal, with its lower 
end resting upon the sounding-board 
of the piano, extended upward through 
the two floors, its upper end being 
exposed before the lecture-table. But 










































385 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


still no sound was heard. A violin 
was then placed upon the end of the 
rod, which was thrown into resonance 
by the ascending thrills, and instantly 
the music of the piano was given out 
in the lecture-room. A guitar and a 
harp were substituted for the violin, 
and with the same result. The vibra¬ 
tions of the piano-strings were com¬ 
municated to the sounding-board, they 
traversed the long rod, were re¬ 
produced by the resonant bodies above, 
the air was carved into waves, and the 
whole musical composition was de¬ 
livered to the listening audience. 


ROBERT FULTON. 

Every American will be glad to 
know something of the life of this dis¬ 
tinguished man, who first overcame 
the wind and the waves, and is immor¬ 
tal as the father of steam navigation. 

He was born in Little Britain (now 
called Fulton), in Pennsylvania, in the 
year 1765. His father died while .Rob¬ 
ert was a mere child, and the lad was 
left to pick up knowledge and educa¬ 
tion the best way he could. He was 
known as a “notional 1 ’ boy,—full of 
mechanical ingenuity; and spent most 
of his time gratifying his curious eye 
and mind among the workshops of the 
place. He made many little wooden 
machines. He also showed a talent for 
drawing, and made many political cari¬ 
catures of the boys who quarreled in 
the streets. At the early age of sev¬ 
enteen, he commenced life in earnest 
as a painter. But his mechanical 
genius never slept, and through his 
lifetime brought him many honors. 

While he was still young his lungs 
became affected, and he visited En¬ 
gland in search of health. Here he 
became the friend of that great paint¬ 
er, Benjamin West; and studied his art 


with constant industry and enthusi¬ 
asm. During this tour, he became ac¬ 
quainted with the Earl of Bridgewater, 
the father of the English canal system; 
and through his influence, and that of 
Lord Stanhope, Fulton was persuaded 
to abandon painting, and give his at¬ 
tention to civil engineering. He estab¬ 
lished a residence at Birmingham, and 
became the companion of James Watt, 
the inventor of the steam engine. He 
here gave much attention to canal en¬ 
gineering, and patented a method of 
measuring inequalities of height. He 
also patented machines for sawing mar¬ 
ble, for spinning flax, for making rope, 
and for digging canals. At this time, 
he urged upon the State of Pennsyl¬ 
vania, through Governor Mifflin, the 
introduction of a line of canals in that 
State. 

In 1797, he went to France, to bring 
to the notice of that government a 
marine torpedo of his invention. He 
lived for a long time in Paris, and ac¬ 
quired the French, German and Italian 
languages. In 1801, Chancellor Liv¬ 
ingston, who had been for some time 
engaged in steam experiments on the 
Hudson river, went to Paris, and met 
Fulton, who immediately joined him 
in a series of experiments, which, after 
two years’ labor, resulted in a machine, 
invented by Fulton, for moving a boat 
by steam. It was made by Watt and 
Bolton, of Birmingham, England, and 
sent to New York in 1806. Fulton 
immediately followed it, and went to 
work to build a steamboat. To raise 
funds therefor, he offered to sell one- 
third of his patent; but nobody had 
faith enough in the undertaking to 
buy it. Finally, he finished the boat 
—the “Clermont” — which made its 
first trip September 14, 1807, traveling 
from New York to Albany, one hun¬ 
dred and fifty miles, in thirty - two 







386 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


hours. The boat then commenced regu¬ 
lar trips between the two cities, but 
was soon too small for the travel, and 
was succeeded by several improved and 
more commodious vessels. 

In 1808, Fulton was married to Miss 
Harriet Livingston, the niece of the 
Chancellor, his partner. All his future 
life was engaged in constant scientific 
work, with special reference to water 
navigation. He died on the 24th day 
of February, 1815. 


WHEAT, BARLEY, OATS, ETC. 

Wheat was cultivated in this coun¬ 
try at a very early date, having been 
sown by Gosnold on the Elizabeth 
Islands on the southern coast of Mas¬ 
sachusetts, as early as 1602, at the time 
he first explored that coast. In 1611 
it was cultivated in Virginia, but the 
settlers soon found that the cultivation 
of tobacco would pay better, and for 
nearly a hundred years there was com¬ 
paratively little raised. Premiums 
were offered to encourage its culture, 
but were not sufficient to check the 
growing attention to tobacco. Wheat 
had been cultivated by the Dutch 
Colony of the New Netherlands, and 
samples of this grain were taken to 
Holland, in 1826, to show what could 
be done in the new country. 

Indian Corn. — This plant is of 
American origin. It was found in cul¬ 
tivation among the aborigines of the 
country at the time of its discovery by 
Columbus. It is referred to by the old¬ 
est historians of Peru. It has been 
found growing wild in various parts of 
Central America ; and Humboldt says: 
“ It is no longer doubted among botan¬ 
ists that maize , or Turkish corn, is a 
true American grain and that the old 
continent received it from the new.” 

Rye was introduced and cultivated 


in all the colonies at the earliest period 
of their settlement, and its meal was 
mixed with Indian meal for the mak¬ 
ing of bread in New England as early 
as 1648, and perhaps even as early as 
1630, and that custom became very 
common. 

Barley and Oats were sown on 
the first settlement of the colonies, 
having been first cultivated by Gos¬ 
nold in 1602, at the same time and 
place where he cultivated the wheat. 

Buckwheat was introduced into the 
colony at Manhattan Island by the 
Dutch West India Company, and raised 
there as early as 1625. Its culture 
was continued by the Dutch to some 
extent, and they used it as provender 
for horses. It was also cultivated by 
the Swedes, who settled along the 
Delaware, in New Jersey and Pennsyl¬ 
vania. 

Timothy. — The cultivation of timo¬ 
thy, the most important of the grasses, 
was not introduced until about 1740, 
having been found by a man named 
Herd, in a swamp near Piscataqua. 
He propagated it till it was taken to 
Maryland and Virginia by Timothy 
Hanson, after whom it is most fre- 
quentl} r called. 


THE ORIGIN OF CAMP-MEETINGS. 

Many statements have been made 
concerning the author and origin of 
camp-meetings. One writer has lo¬ 
cated the first meeting in a certain 
place, and another in a different region, 
and, as different localities have been 
claimed, so have the agencies and cir¬ 
cumstances, also, varied. 

The following brief history of these 
meetings have been carefully obtained 
from authentic records, and is believed 
to be correct: 

The author of camp-meetings, Rev. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


387 


James McGready, was of Scotcli-Irish 
descent, and was born in Pennsylvania. • 
When quite young, his parents moved 
to North Carolina, and, at an early age, 
young McGready united with the Pres¬ 
byterian Church. In the fall of 1785, 
he was sent to Pennsylvania to be 
educated, and first entered a school 
conducted by Rev. Joseph Smith, at 
Upper Buffalo, and designed for the 
education of young men preparing for 
the ministry. After remaining here 
for some time, he entered a school more 
recently opened by Rev. John McMil¬ 
lan, D. D., which grew into what has 
long been known and honored as Jef¬ 
ferson College. 

Mr. McGready was licensed to preach 
by the Presbytery of Redstone, August 
13th, 1788. After devoting some time 
to the work of the ministry, he came 
to the conclusion that he had no ex¬ 
perimental knowledge of Christ. In 
this particular, he resembled Rev. John 
Wesley, of whom it is said, in the En¬ 
cyclopedia Americana, that he preached 
some years before his conversion. Mr. 
McGready found peace in believing, on 
Sabbath morning at a sacramental 
meeting, near the Monongahela river; 
and soon after that he returned to 
North Carolina. His earnest and 
pointed discourses caused much oppo¬ 
sition from careless professors and 
unbelievers. Some of the baser sort 
went to his church, broke down the 
seats, burnt the pulpit, and left a letter 
written to him in blood, requiring him 
to leave the country at the peril of his 
life. On the following Sabbath morn¬ 
ing, he stood in the door of his church 
and preached a sermon of great power, 
and full of warning. 

In 1796, Mr. McGready went to 
Kentucky and took the pastoral charge 
of three congregations — Jasper River, 
Red River and Muddy River. 


Ho had the members of his new 
charge to sign a covenant to spend 
one-half hour every Saturday evening, 
beginning at the setting of the sun, 
and one-half hour every Sabbath morn¬ 
ing, from the rising of the sun, plead¬ 
ing with God to revive his work. 

During the following year a religious 
interest was realized, commencing at 
Jasper River meeting-house. In 1799 
it became more extended, and he was 
assisted by other ministers of piety 
and energy. 

In 1800 a revival prevailed through¬ 
out a vast region of the country, and, 
hence, it is called the “Revival of 
1800.” 

The ministers who labored in this 
great work were James McGready, 
William McGee, Samuel Me Ado w, and 
John Rankin, of the Presbyterian 
Church, and John McGee, of the 
Methodist E. Church. The first camp¬ 
meeting ever known in Christendom 
was held in July, 1800, at Jasper River, 
Logan county, Ky.; the circumstances 
of which are as follows : A family who 
had just arrived in the country, from 
one of the Carolinas, weredesirous of 
attending one of Mr. McGready’s meet¬ 
ings, but were about to decline going, 
because the meeting was some distance 
from them, and they had no acquaint¬ 
ances in the country. A female mem¬ 
ber of the family suggested that they 
had camped with their wagon on their 
journey from Carolina to the country, 
and they might still camp long enough 
to attend the meeting. 

They accordingly took their wagon 
and provisions, and camped near the 
church and attended the meeting. At 
the next meeting in his charge, several 
other families followed their example. 
This was a good omen, and suggested 
to Mr. McGready the idea of a camp¬ 
meeting, and he accordingly’appointed 





388 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


a meeting at Jasper River, and an¬ 
nounced that the people would be 
expected to camp on the ground. For 
shelter, they used their wagon covers 
and cloth tents. The first camp-meet¬ 
ing was held from Friday until the next 
Tuesday, and resulted in forty-five 
conversions. The ministers who oc¬ 
cupied the stand on that occasion were 
James McGready, William McGee, and 
William Hodge. A vast concourse of 
people came to the meeting, from the 
distance of twenty, fifty, and even a 
hundred miles. 

Camp-meetings are now held by 
various denominations throughout the 
United States, and in Europe. 


GEORGE STEPHENSON. 

The credit of the inventic n of rail¬ 
ways is claimed by the friends of many 
men. It will never be known who 
first conceived the idea of land loco¬ 
motion without animal power. But 
all the argument and bickering in the 
world cannot rob George Stephenson 
of the glory of bringing that idea into 
practical use, and thus working an 
entire revolution in the commerce of 
the world. To his clear head and 
dogged perseverance, we are indebted 
for the practical success of a system 
which, next to the telegraph, has done 
more than anything else to promote 
the wealth and progress of the world. 

He was born at Wylan, near New- 
eastle-on-Tyne, June 9th, 1781. His 
parents were exceedingly poor, but in¬ 
dustrious and respectable. His father 
was fireman of the stationary engine 
which performed the pumping work 
of the village coal-mine — and near his 
house was the wooden tramway on 
which the coal-cars were drawn by 
horses. At eight years of age he 
killed the time of his employment of 


watching cows, by making little, sta¬ 
tionary engines out of mud and sticks. 
At fourteen, his wildest youthful am¬ 
bition was realized by his appointment 
as assistant fireman on his father’s 
engine. His leisure time, thereafter, 
was passed in studying the machinery 
and principles of his engine, of which 
he soon became a perfect master. At 
seventeen, he had charge of the engine 
at the Water-Row coal pit, the prop¬ 
erty of the Duke of Newcastle. 

All this time, he had no educational 
advantages. But at seventeen, he 
seized the opportunity of attending a 
night-school, to study reading, writing 
and figures, — the latter of which was 
his particular delight. At nineteen, 
he was proud to be able to write his 
name. 

At twenty, he fell in love with 
Fanny Henderson. But, before he 
could marry, he must fix the door 
against the wolf. So, while he attend¬ 
ed to his engine, he mended shoes for 
the neighbors,—thus managing to lay 
up a little marriage money,—and soon 
had his wife. Shortly after, bad for¬ 
tune came upon him in many ways, 
but he worried it through. 

As soon as his boy Robert was big 
enough to go to school, Stephenson 
sent him there, and worked nights, 
mending clocks and watches for money 
to keep the lad at his books. In after 
years, that boy was his best triend and 
greatest help. 

While the boy was at school, some¬ 
body made a new engine for the Kil- 
lingworth colliery, but it wouldn’t 
work. All the engineers in the 
country tried to fix it, without avail. 
Then George went at it, while the 
others laughed at him ; and, in four 
days the engine was all right. A 
short time after, he was “engine doc¬ 
tor ” for the whole country. 





















































THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


; 


389 


Long before he was bom, other people 
had tried to make locomotive engines 
to run on tramways and common roads, 
but without success. So Stephenson 
went to work at it — for, when every¬ 
body else failed in mechanics, he was 
always bound to see what he could do. 
He made an engine, and, on the 25th 
day of July, 1814, it drew thirty tons 
of freight, four miles an hour. And 
that 25th day of July was the birth¬ 
day of railroads. From this time he 
labored incessantly to perfect his sys¬ 
tem, and made several improvements 
in the machinery and the rails. In 
November, 1822, he commenced oper¬ 
ating another coal railway, from Het- 
ton colliery to the river Wier, a 
distance of eight miles, using five 
locomotives of his own make. They 
traveled four miles an hour, with a 
load of sixty-four tons. The first 
public railwav ever built, the Stockton 
and Darlington, was opened Septem¬ 
ber 27th, 1825, and Stephenson drove 
the first engine on it. From this time 
his success was assured ; and all his 
after life was spent in constant labor 
for the improvement and advancement 
of his pet design. He died on the 
12th of August, 1848, at the age of 
sixty-seven years. 


BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENT WITH 
LIGHT. 

Choose a room where the sun shines 
in through the window, and then block 
out all the light, by means of a shutter 
or otherwise, taking care that all 
cracks are stopped. Then cut a hole 
about six inches square in the shutter, 
and stop the hole with two or three 
thicknesses of rich deep blue or blue- 
ish-purple glass. A broad beam of 
deep blue or purple light from the sun 
will thus stream down into the other¬ 


wise dark room. Then, hold in the 
deep blue light a bottle or other article 
made of uranium glass. Ornamental 
bottles made of this glass, which is 
sometimes called “canary” glass.be¬ 
cause of its light yellow color, are 
commonly on sale in chemists’ shops. 
They are plentifully made to hold 
smelling salts, and may cost from six¬ 
pence to three shillings each. The 
blue light should be deep and not very 
brilliant. When the uranium glass 
bottle is held in it, the bottle will 
appear to glow with great beauty, with 
all the brilliancy of a glow worm, as 
if white hot.— 


ROSES. 

The Persians, compared with then 
neighbors, the Turks and Egyptians, 
are a lively people, but we would call 
them quiet, and even sad, because their 
gayety is so different from ours and 
their manners are more grave and dig¬ 
nified. But they are fond of amuse¬ 
ments, and one of their yearly festi¬ 
vals is the “ Feast of the Roses,” which 
takes place during the rose season, 
which is June, July, and, indeed, the 
greater part of the summer. 

The climate being very warm, the 
people live much out of doors, and 
during this feast tents are pitched; 
every one wears his or her prettiest 
dresses, and, as all Eastern people are 
fond of bright colors, the scene is a 
very gay one. 

During this festival everything be¬ 
tokens mirth and enjoyment. The 
cymbals and lute are heard from morn¬ 
ing till night, the story-tellers recount 
their most beautiful tales, and the 
dancing girls dance for hours at a time. 
Then when the night comes, and the 
moonlight covers everything like a 
silver cloud, the people stretch them- 











390 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION 



selves ozl their soft carpets, and listen 
to the songs of the nightingales and 
soft serenades on the women’s lutes. 

In some parts of Turkey whole fields 
of roses are cultivated, from which 
the Turks make the famous “altar 
of roses,” which is so fragrant that 
a vessel, or anything touched with a 
drop of it, seems never to lose the 
smell; and the Hindoos scatter rose 
leaves in the water they drink, to give 
it a pleasant appearance. 

There are more than two hundred 
kinds of roses, and they are of all sizes, 
from the tiny “Picayune rose,” so 
called because it is no larger than a 
five-cent piece — which in the South 
is called a picayune — to the immense 
cabbage rose ; of all shades of color, 
bright yellow, pink, red and almost 
black. The rose of Damascus, or 
damask rose, is the first one brought 
to this country, a very deep red, 
with a strong perfume. Then there 
are the Egyptian Sea roses, tea roses, 
rock roses, which grow in dry, rocky 
places, where no other flower can live ; 
and the Alpine rose, growing by the 
eternal snow drifts of the Alps. 

Roses are hardy plants, and will 
live a long time if properly cared for. 
There is a rose tree in Germany which 
is known to be eight hundred years 
old, and is still blossoming. 

We all know and love the pretty 
moss rose, with its mossy, green veil, 
that gives it such a shy, modest air; 
and the tea rose, which in the South 
and West, grows on large trees. 

But there is one rose more curious 
than all others—the Rose of Jericho. 
It has another name by which botan¬ 
ists call it, that is, Anastatica , a Greek 
word meaning resurrection, and the 
Arabs call it the symbol of immortal¬ 
ity, because it comes to life again long 
after it has seemed to be dead. It 


lives in the hot sands of the deserts of 
Sahara, and when the dry season 
comes, it withers, folds its leaves and 
draws up its roots, like little feet, into 
a light ball, and the winds of the des¬ 
ert carry it until it reaches a moist 
soil, and then, we are told, it drops, 
takes root, and its leaves become green, 
and its blossoms open, a delicate pink. 

There is a flower in Mexico, known 
as the resurrection flower, which is 
very much the same. It may be car¬ 
ried about in your pocket for a year or 
more, and yet, when put in a saucer of 
water, in a few hours will blossom out 
as bright and fresh as if it had just 
come out of the garden. 

When the Romans conquered Bri¬ 
tain, more than 1,800 years ago, they 
introduced many curious customs into 
that country — among others that of 
carving the figure of a rose on the 
ceilings of their banqueting halls, or 
suspending a natural rose over the 
dining table, with the Latin motto, 
“ sub rosa,” written above it, to indi¬ 
cate that whatever was said there 
among friends, or under the rose, for 
that was the meaning of the words, 
should not be repeated, the white rose 
being the symbol of silence. 

The rose is the national emblem of 
England, as the thistle is of Scotland, 
and the shamrock, or clover, of Ireland. 
Every one who has studied history, 
knows of the War of Roses in En¬ 
gland, when the two rival families of 
York and Lancaster fought for the En¬ 
glish crown, the House of York hav¬ 
ing for its badge the white rose, and 
the House of Lancaster the red. 

Many readers have heard of the 
language of flowers, in which people 
can hold conversation with each other ; 
for instance: a white rose is the 
emblem of silence ; a withered rose of 
any color, “ Let us forget; ” and a 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


391 


yellow rose, “Despair,” and so on. A 
rose handed to a person means one 
thing when handed upright; another 
when its position is reversed. With 
its thorns it has a certain meaning ; 
without them still another. Among 
these Eastern people — Persians, Turks 
and Hindoos — this language of flow¬ 
ers is so perfectly understood that by 
means of a bundle of their favorite 
roses, long conversations may be car¬ 
ried on without a word being spoken. 
This suits these people, who do not 
like to talk very much, but who are, 
nevertheless, a very romantic, dreamy 
and poetic race. 


APPLES —FIRST IN THIS COUNTRY. 

The first apples raised in this country 
were from trees planted on Governor’s 
Island, in the harbor of Boston, from 
which, on the 10th of October, 1639, 
u ten fair pippins were brought,” there 
being not one apple or pear tree plant¬ 
ed in any part of the country but upon 
this island. Governor Endicott had, 
on his farm in Salem, now in Danvers, 
in 1640, the first nursery of young 
fruit-trees that was ever planted in this 
country, and it is related that he sold 
five hundred apple trees for two hun¬ 
dred and fifty acres of land. 

The cultivation of fruit was rare in 
the early history of the country. At 
the close of the Revolution, and, in fact, 
at the end of the last century, it would 
have been impossible to have found in 
the whole country the number and 
varieties of good fruits which might 
now be found in a single orchard. 
Apples were apples, and all apples 
were fit to make cider, and that was 
enough. It was regarded as absurd 
for any but a young man to set out 
trees; and, when a man of seventy 
began to plant an orchard, the idea 


was so ludicrous as to subject him to 
the ridicule of the whole neighbor¬ 
hood. The oldest horticultural society 
in the United States was founded in 
1829 


THE FIRST HORSES IN AMERICA. 


The culture of the horse has be¬ 
come an art in America. In the old 
time, before the days of railways, or 
steamboats, or turnpikes — when the 
wretched country roads were mere 
clearings in the forests and patchings 
on the hillsides — the horse was so 
much needed for purposes of travel 
and transportation that little oppor¬ 
tunity was offered for developing the 
better traits of his character which 
make him the noble, useful, and fash¬ 
ionable animal that he now is. To 
this culture the farmer of to-day is 
indebted for his sturdiest teams, and 
the wealthy man for one of the great¬ 
est comforts of his business or leisure. 

The first horses known in America 
were brought here by Columbus, in 
his second voyage, A. D., 1493. The 
first in the United States were 
brought to Florida, in 1527, by Ca- 
beca de Yaca. He brought forty-two, 
but they soon died; the “ flowery 
meadows” did not suit their tempera¬ 
ment. In 1604, M. L’Escarbot, a 
French lawyer, brought several horses 
to Acadia. From this stock sprung the 
famous Canada ponies, which, owing 
to the bitter climate in which they 
live, do not represent the size of their 
Norman ancestors, but are still the 
knottiest, naughtiest, hardiest little 
creatures of their kind in the world. 

In 1609 six mares and one horse 
were taken to Jamestown, Virginia; 
and in 1657 the exportation of their 
descendants was prohibited. Higgin- 
son brought the first horses to Massa- 










392 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


cliusetts, in 1629. These were of 
English blood, from Leicestershire. 
New York horses date from 1625, 
having been imported by the Dutch 
West India Company, and selected 
from the Flemish race. 

These different families of the valu¬ 
able animals were subsequently culti¬ 
vated by careful inter-breeding with 
horses which the warmer climate of 
the middle and southern States had 
made more delicate. These are the 
fathers and mothers of our present 
race-horses. The hardy ponies of 
Canada married with their gentler 
cousins of Massachusetts and Ver¬ 
mont, from whence sprung the race 
of famous trotters, the Hambletoni- 
ans, the Morgans, and others. They 
are especially valuable as roadsters. 
In speed and power of endurance 

they excel all other horses in the 
%/ 

world. 

The wild horses of the plains (the 
“ mustangs 71 ) are supposed to have 
descended from the splendid Spanish 
horses lost and abandoned in the 
Mississippi Valley by DeSoto, during 
the disastrous part of his exploring 
expedition. 


AMERICAN CATTLE. 

These glorious beasts, who bear so 
large a share of our national trade 
and comfort, are not of American ori¬ 
gin. They came from Great Britain, 
having been first brought to this 
country about the year 1609, by the 
sturdy Englishmen who settled Vir¬ 
ginia. From there they kept pace 
with the spread of civilization, plow¬ 
ing our fields, transporting our pro¬ 
duce, and furnishing beef for the old 
folks and milk for the babies, all over 
the land. In 1610, several cows were 
imported ; and in 1611 over one hun¬ 


dred kine were added to the rich past¬ 
ure herds of the Old Dominion. 
Shortly after, some adventurous men 
imported several cattle from the West 
Indies. These are supposed to be 
co-heirs in the glory of Columbus, 
having been descendants of those 
brought over by him in 1493. In the 
old Virginia times these animals were 
considered so valuable for general pur¬ 
poses besides their flesh, that killing 
them was forbidden by law, on pain 
of death. In 1620 there w~ere five 
hundred head of cattle in Virginia. 
In 1639 there were thirty thousand. 
The New England stock was largely 
derived from these. 

The first foreign cattle in New 
England were brought there in 1624, 
by Gov. Winslow. That enormous 
herd consisted of three heifers and one 
bull. They belonged to the Plymouth 
Colony, and were owned in common. 
In 1626, twelve cows were sent to 
Cape Ann,—in 1629, twenty more 
were imported ; and in 1630, “ Massa¬ 
chusetts Bay’’ had an invoice of one 
hundred more. 

The first cattle in New York were 
brought from Holland. The Dutch 
West India Company brought over 
one hundred and three horses and 
cattle for breeding. Each tenant was 
“loaned 17 four cows and four horses 
— the progeny to be kept, and the old 
fellows to be returned. The Swedish 
West India Company introduced them 
in Delaware as early as 1627. In 
1631, 7 32 and 7 33, Capt. John Mason 
brought several cattle to New Hamp¬ 
shire. The different tribes of cattle 
thus brought into the country were 
exchanged back and forth among the 
colonies, until the breeds became inex¬ 
tricably mixed, and the common cattle 
of the United States is the conse¬ 
quence. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


393 


Ill early times, the cattle were fed 
in winter merely on corn husks and 
wheat straw, and the cows were not 
milked during that season, on account 
of a superstitious belief that milking 
would kill them. Still, they increased 
rapidly, and before the commence¬ 
ment of the eighteenth century they 
were plenty, even in the Mississippi 
Valley and up the Louisiana Red 
River country. In 1750 one Rhode 
Island farmer had one hundred cows. 
Another sold thirteen thousand pounds 
of cheese in twelve months, and an¬ 
other made ten thousand pounds of 
butter in five months, from seventy- 
three cows. 

In 1868 there were 21,433,099 cattle 
in the United States, over nine mill¬ 
ions of which were milch cows, two 
millions working oxen, and ten mill¬ 
ions kept for beef and other pur¬ 
poses. The money invested in 
slaughtered animals that year ex¬ 
ceeded $318,000,000. 


AMERICAN SWINE. 

The introduction of hogs to 
America dates back to the year 
1538, when Ferdinand de Soto 
brought them from Cuba to Florida. 
It is supposed that the Cuban race 
descended from the herd which 
Columbus brought over in 1493, 
in that ark of his which carried 
all sorts of animals, and made him 
the Noah as well as the Adam of 
the western world. In 1553, the 
Portugese (who are notoriously very 
fond of hoggishness) brought their 
favorite animals to Nova Scotia. 
It was a good climate for hogs,— 
so they grew and were multiplied. 
In 1609, the English brought them 
to Virginia. That was another good 
country for them. Their numbers 


increased so rapidly that in 1627 
they had become a pest in the colony, 
although the Indians killed them by 
hundreds in the woods, and lived on 
wild pork. 

In 1624, Governor Winslow brought 
them to Plymouth Rock; and the 
next year the Dutch West India 
Company made New York City happy 
with them. They increased so greatly 
as to attract attention and study, 
even in their wild state, and here 
men discovered that corn-fed pork 
was better than mast-fed. 

All these hogs were common, or 
coarsely bred. The first fine-bred 
hogs in the country were a present 
from the Duke of Bedford to George 
Washington. But he never saw 
them, for the man who brought them 
over the ocean sold them to some¬ 
body else, and pocketed the money. 
Their progeny were soon well known 
in Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. 

For a long time, the hogs in the 
eastern and middle States were 
long-legged, slab-sided, with sharp 
noses. This race was much improved 
by crossing with another, imported 
by Chancellor Livingston, of New 
York, about the time of the intro¬ 
duction to our pastures of Merino 
sheep — and known (for that reason) 
as the u Merino hog.” Since that time, 
a great many different breeds have 
been imported from Europe and 
Asia; and improvements made in 
the breeds until the American hogs 
compare favorably with any in the 
world. _ 

THE INTRODUCTION OF SHEEP IN 
AMERICA. 

As nearly as ascertained, the first 
sheep brought to America came to 
Virginia in 1609. They were from 
English flocks. In 1648 there were 











394 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


three thousand sheep in that colony. 
In 1625, the Dutch West India Com¬ 
pany imported a large herd of sheep 
from Holland to New York. This 
venture was not successful. There 
were too many of those amiable and 
highly necessary animals, dogs and 
wolves, in the country; and the fierce 
and unprofitable sheep had to suffer. 
In 1643, only sixteen remained in the 
colony. 

The Pilgrims brought sheep to the 
u stern and rock-bound coast'' of New 
England, about the year 1630. In 
1633 there were several on the islands 
in Boston harbor. In 1635 they were 
domiciled in Portsmouth, New Hamp¬ 
shire. In 1660 they were brought to 
Nantucket Island, and wool-growing 
began to become one of the important 
industries of that section. 

In those old days there were few 
large herds of sheep in the country. 
Each farmer kept a few coarse, rag¬ 
ged sheep for his own use, and made a 
few homespun garments. The first 
fine-wooled sheep were Merinos, 
brought from Spain to Boston, by 
William Foster, in 1793. This small 
beginning of the present fine-wooled 
flocks, consisted of two ewes and one 
ram. They came near dying on ship¬ 
board, but were saved by diligent 
care. Mr. Foster presented them to 
Mr. Andrew Cragie, of Cambridge, 
who, having no idea of their great 
value, quietly ate them. He afterward 
paid one thousand dollars, at an auc¬ 
tion sale, for a ram. 

It was not until 1810 that the im¬ 
portation of merino sheep became 
large. It was much favored by the 
effects of the embargo of 1808 — fine 
wool being then worth one dollar and 
a half to two dollars a pound. In the 
two succeeding years over four thou¬ 
sand sheep were imported. 


In 1850 there were nearly twenty- 
two million sheep in the United 
States. Most of these were in the 
southern and western States, the num¬ 
ber in New England and the middle 
States having largely decreased. In 
1870 the sheep population of this 
country had reached thirty-eight mill¬ 
ions, the aggregate value of which 
was more than eighty-two million 
dollars. The wool crop of that year 
was over one hundred and five mill¬ 
ion pounds. 


THE HISTORY OF THE BALLOON. 

The inventors of the balloon were 
the brothers Stephen and Joseph 
Montgolfier, sons of a paper-manu¬ 
facturer at a small town called Anno- 
nay, in France. The Montgolfier 
family were ardent Huguenots, and 
suffered a great deal after the massa¬ 
cre of St. Bartholomew. Both broth¬ 
ers were mathematicians and archi¬ 
tects. 

Annonay affords a fine view of the 
Alps. The two Montgolfiers had often 
watched the ascent of clouds along 
the sides of the mountain, and, being 
of a reflective cast of mind, they 
began to inquire into the causes of 
the equilibrium of those enormous 
masses of clouds sailing through the 
air. They found a theoretical solu¬ 
tion ; but, not satisfied with this, re¬ 
solved to test their ability in copying 
nature. They thought of making 
artificial clouds, and of sending them 
to join those that hovered about the 
tops of the Alps. They enveloped the 
vapor of water in a light envelope. 
It rose for a moment; but the vapor 
condensing, it soon fell to the ground. 
They next tried to inclose the smoke 
produced by the combustion of wood 
in a linen envelope ; but here they 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


395 


met with no better success. They 
now came across Priestley’s “Experi¬ 
ment on the Different Kinds of Air,” 
in which the learned chemist ac¬ 
quainted the world with a great num¬ 
ber of new gases and with their 
properties. Stephen, reflecting on 
Priestley’s theories, came to the con¬ 
clusion that it would be possible, by 
enclosing in a light envelope a gas 
lighter than air, to cause the whole to 
rise. He first tried hydrogen; but, 
the material of his envelope not being 
able to prevent its escape, his balloon 
soon returned. The brothers now 
lighted a fire, held paper bags over it, 
and found that, when well filled with 
the smoke or the heated air, the bag 
moved rapidly upward. 

It was on the 5th of June, 1783, 
that the first public balloon ascension 
was effected, under the direction of 
the Montgolfier brothers. Their bal¬ 
loon was made of linen, and was 105 
feet in circumference. It was heated 
from little piles of straw, and, when 
set free, rose to a considerable height, 
traveled ten minutes and then de¬ 
scended, about a mile and a half from 
the place of departure. 

The ascension of Montgolfier’s bal¬ 
loon created a general sensation 
wherever the news spread, and other 
ascensions followed in quick succes¬ 
sion. Two brothers of the name of 
Robert decided to repeat the Montgol¬ 
fier experiment. Hydrogen — at this 
time known as inflammable air — was 
used, instead of common heated air, to 
fill the balloon, which was made of 
silk, varnished with a species of gum, 
and was about thirteen feet in diame¬ 
ter. The inflation began on the 23d 
of August, 1783, and was not con¬ 
cluded until the 27th, when it was 
set free and rose to the height of about 
3,000 feet. A vast assemblage of peo¬ 


ple gathered at the Champs de Mars 
and witnessed it ascend. The excite¬ 
ment created by the novel sight in 
the gay city of Paris was so intense 
that the crowd did not disperse, 
although, shortly after the balloon had 
made its ascent, a heavy shower of 
rain began to fall. The rain, however, 
did not check in any way the flight of 
the balloon. After remaining in the 
air a little less than an hour, it de¬ 
scended fifteen miles from the Champs 
de Mars. It met with a very inhos¬ 
pitable reception from the peasantry 
among whom it fell; for, believing it 
to be a messenger of Satan, they tore 
it into shreds. 

About the middle of the following 
month Joseph Montgolfier sent up a 
balloon in the presence of the French 
royal family at Versailles. This time 
a cage, with a cock, a duck and a sheep 
for tenants, was attached to the bag. 
They were carried to a height of 
1,500 feet and returned uninjured 
after a journey of two miles, performed 
in eight minutes, to the earth. 

Francoise Philatre de Rozier was 
the first human being to navigate the 
air. After various experiments in a 
balloon attached to the ground with 
ropes he risked himself in a free one, 
and his first free ascent was successful. 
A short time after, other ascents were 
made by two other French gentlemen, 
Messrs. Charles and Robert. Charles 
reduced the balloon to pretty much 
the form it has at present. He intro¬ 
duced the netting, the valve and the 
car. After this balloon ascensions 
became a rather every-day affair. 

The first American balloon ascen¬ 
sion took place in 1783, and the first 
English one in the same year. Of 
the most noted balloon ascensions 
we have space to mention but a 
few. That of Lunardi, secretary to 




396 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the Ambassador from Naples to 
England, is remarkable more for 
the excitement its novelty produced 
in London than from any wonderful 
incidents connected with his serial 
trip or any new discovery made by 
him. His balloon was thirty-three 
feet in diameter, and, when exhibited 
at the Lyceum, in the Strand, attracted 
vast numbers to see it. He made his 
ascension Sept. 15, 1784, from the 
artillery grounds in the presence of 
the Prince of Wales, and a vast 
concourse of people. He took a 
pigeon, a cat and a dog with him, 
and hoped to steer the balloon up¬ 
ward or downward by means of oars, 
a large number of which he took 
with him. The pigeon flew away, 
and he descended after he had been 
up an hour and a half, to deposit the 
cat, which was suffering from the 
cold, on terra firma. One of his 
oars broke and fell. A lady, sup¬ 
posing it to be the aeronant himself, 
was so much affected that she died. 
A jury sitting at a criminal trial 
acquitted a young man accused of 
felony, rather than run the risk of not 
witnessing the ascension. The King, 
in consultation with his Ministers, 
dissolved the meeting in order to 
enjoy the new sensation. Lunardi 
descended the second time at Standon, 
near Ware. He became the lion of 
the day and the center of attraction 
for a time, and was presented at court, 
all of which encouraged others to 
ascend from English soil, and the 
Italian soon found a great many 
Englishmen to emulate his daring. 
Among these was Blanchard, who, 
accompanied by an American physi¬ 
cian, crossed the Channel in 1785. 
This is the first time it was crossed. 
Philatre de Rozier attempted to 
repeat Blanchard’s feat on the 15th 


of June, 1785, leaving Boulogne for 
England. He used two balloons, or 
rather a double balloon, one a fire- 
balloon, ten teet in diameter, and the 
other a gas-balloon, thirty-seven feet 
in diameter. The fire-balloon was 
placed under the gas-balloon, and 
when the aeronaut wished to ascend 
or descend he increased or decreased 
the fire in the fire-balloon, and thus 
avoided a waste of gas. The ascent was 
successfully made; but after the bal¬ 
loons had been in the air about half 
an hour they were discovered to be in 
flames. Rozier and his companion, 
Romain, fell from a height of 3,000 
feet, and both were killed — the former 
instantly, the latter surviving a few 
moments only. Others have fre¬ 
quently tried to cross the Channel. 
Crosbie, who was the first to ascend 
from Ireland, tried it in 1785, and 
fell into the sea, but was rescued 
by a passing vessel. Lunardi, already 
mentioned, also fell into the sea in 
a similar endeavor and was saved in 
like manner. 

Nadar’s balloon, constructed in 
Paris in 1863, had a capacity of 200,- 
000 cubic feet of gas. There were two 
stories to the car. He made two as¬ 
cents in the “ Giant,'’ the first time 
carrying thirteen persons and the sec¬ 
ond nine. The first trip was a very 
short one. The second lasted seven¬ 
teen hours, and was brought to a close 
400 miles from Paris, the place of 
departure. It was a very difficult 
thing to land the monster. It dragged 
along the ground, in consequence of 
the high wind blowing, a distance of 
seven miles, and no one in the car 
escaped entirely uninjured. 

The largest balloon ever constructed 
was probably Godard’s fire-balloon. 
It had a capacity of nearly 500,000 
cubic feet of gas, and was heated by 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


397 


an eighteen-foot stove, which, with 
the chimney, weighed 980 pounds! 
A couple of successful ascensions were 
made with this balloon in 1864, from 
Cremorne Gardens. 

The ascents of M. Glaisher in the 
interests of science in 1862, are among 
the most remarkable ever made. He 
made in all, about twenty-eight as¬ 
cents, reaching various heights. The 
greatest height reached was on Sept. 
5, 1862, when he rose nearly seven 
miles from the earth. His descrip¬ 
tion of this ascent is exceedingly in¬ 
teresting. He left the ground at three 
minutes after 1 P. M. The tempera¬ 
ture at starting was 59, and the 
dew-point 50. One mile above the 
temperature was 41 and the dew-point 
38. “ Shortly after, we entered a 

cloud of about 1,100 feet in thickness, 
in which the temperature of the air 
fell to 36^ degrees, the dew-point 
being the same, indicating that the 
air here was saturated with moisture. 
On emerging from the cloud at 1:17 
we came upon a flood of strong sun¬ 
light, with a beautiful blue sky, with¬ 
out a cloud above us, and a magnificent 
sea of clouds below—the surface 
being varied with endless hills, hill¬ 
ocks, mountain-chains and many 
snow-white masses rising from it.” 
When five miles high, the voyagers 
experienced some difficulty in breath¬ 
ing ; and when they had attained the 
elevation of 29,000 feet M. Glaisher 
laid his arm on the table, possessed, 
he says, of its full vigor, but, on being 
desirous of using it, he found it pow¬ 
erless. He continues: 

“ I tried to move the other arm and 
found it powerless, also. I then tried 
to shake myself and succeeded in shak¬ 
ing my body. I seemed to have no 
limbs. I then looked at the barome¬ 
ter, and whilst doing it, my head fell 


on my left shoulder. I struggled and 
shook n:y body again, but could not 
move my arms. I got my head up¬ 
right, but for an instant only, when it 
fell on my right shoulder, and then I 
fell backward, my back resting on the 
side of the car, and my head on its 
edge. When I shook my body I 
seemed to have power over the mus¬ 
cles of mv back, and considerable 

%j 7 

power over those of my neck, but 
none over either my arms or my legs ; 
in fact, I seemed to have none. As in 
the case of the arms, all muscular 
power was lost in an instant from my 
back and neck. I dimly saw Mr. 
Cogswell (his companion) in the ring, 
and endeavored to speak, but could 
not; when, in an instant, intense dark 
blackness came, the optic nerve finally 
lost power suddenly. I was still con¬ 
scious, with as active a brain as at the 
present moment while writing this. I 
thought I had been seized with as¬ 
phyxia, and that I should experience 
no more, as death would come unless 
we speedily descended. Other thoughts 
were actively entering my mind when 
I suddenly became unconscious, as on 
going to sleep. . . . My last ob¬ 

servation was made at 1:54, at 29,- 
000 feet. Whilst powerless I heard 
the words temperature and observa¬ 
tion, and knew that Mr. Cogswell was 
in the car speaking to me and endeav¬ 
oring to arouse me. . . . There¬ 

fore, consciousness and hearing had 
returned. I then heard him speak 
more emphatically, but I could not 
see, speak or move. I heard him again 
say: ‘Do try—now do !’ Then I saw 
the instruments dimly, then Mr. Cogs¬ 
well, and very shortly saw clearly. I 
rose in my seat and walked round, as 
though waking from sleep, though 
not refreshed by sleep, and said to 
Mr. Cogswell: ‘ I have been insensi- 





398 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ble. 1 He said: ‘Youhave, and I, too, 
very nearly. 1 . . . Mr. Cogswell 

told me he had lost the use of his 
hands, which were black, and I poured 
brandy over them. 11 

At that height it was intensely 
cold. Hoar frost formed around the 
neck of the balloon. Mr. Cogswell’s 
hands were frozen. The water in the 
vessel supplying the wet-bulb ther¬ 
mometer was solid ice. Pigeons let 
out of the balloon at six or seven 
miles dropped down like so much lead. 
While M. Glaisher was insensible it 
is estimated that the balloon reached 
a height of 37,000 feet, or seven miles. 

The above extracts are taken from 
the British Association report, and 
are to be found, with much more, in 
the article on Aeronautics in the first 
volume of the new edition of the 
Encyclopedia Britannica — an article 
which has been of frequent use in 
verifying some of the facts above 
adduced. 

The author of the article in the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica says that the 
number of accidents that have 
occurred bears but a very small pro¬ 
portion to the number of successful 
attempts that have been made. Of 
471 adventurers only nine were killed, 
and, of these, one owed his death to 
bravado, and six to the dangers at¬ 
tending the use of the fire-balloons. 
It must be remembered that most of 
these 471 adventurers made several 
ascents. 

Balloons were extensively used in 
the American and Franco-Prussian 
wars. One that left Paris during the 
siege landed near Christiana, Norway, 
fifteen hours after its ascent — having 
in the meantime crossed the North 
Sea. 

Great efforts have been made to 
devise some means of guiding balloons; 


but the medium in which they are 
necessarily immersed subjects them to 
such a complex system of forces that 
it is doubtful if it will ever be possible 
to navigate them securely. 


THE STEAM FIRE ENGINE. 

The great importance of early, 
rapid and incessant work in fighting 
fire, gave rise to the steam fire-engine ; 
one of the greatest and most impor¬ 
tant inventions with which the world 
has been blessed. The old-fashioned 
hand-engines were too slow in opera¬ 
tion, and required too much manual 
labor. About 1850, a stationary en¬ 
gine was employed, in New York, to 
pump water into the hand engines ; 
but it was worse than nothing and 
was soon abandoned. 

The first real steam fire-engine was 
made for the Cincinnati Fire Depart¬ 
ment, in 1832. A steam boiler, made 
for the purpose, was attached to the 
steam cylinder and pumps of a hand 
engine, and the whole put on wheels. 
At its first trial steam was raised from 
cold water, and water thrown one 
hundred and thirty feet, through 
three hundred and fifty feet of hose, 
in four minutes and five seconds. 
Such a brilliant success awakened 
the greatest enthusiasm, and made the 
steam fire-engine a fixed fact. An 
engine was immediately built, and put 
in charge of a picked company, which 
was kept under salary by the city. 
So we see that the “ paid fire depart 
ment 11 system is a twin brother of 
the steam fire-engine. The people of 
Cincinnati now have their reward—- 
for to-day their fire department is 
acknowledged to be the best in tha 
world. 

The engine thus built, was called 
the “Citizens 1 Gift,” and is still in 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


399 


use in Cincinnati. Immediately after 
the organization of the paid system, 
Miles Greenwood, one of the wealth¬ 
iest and most prominent citizens of 
that place, and the proprietor of the 
largest iron foundry in the city, was 
appointed Chief Engineer. To him 
and to Enoch Megrue, his successor, 
the world is principally indebted for 
the present perfection of the steam- 
tire svstem. 

%s 

Other engines were soon made, and 
put in service under the energetic and 
sensible management of Mr. Green¬ 
wood. They were built by Messrs. 
A. & B. Latta, of Cincinnati, who are 
still doing the same work in that city. 
The first one made after the u Citi¬ 
zens 1 Gift” was called the “Uncle Joe 
Ross.” 

After the Cincinnati success, the 
steam fire-engine was rapidly intro¬ 
duced in all the principal cities of the 
Union, and is now used in every town 
of any pretensions. Other machinists 
followed the example of the Lattas, 
and engines are now made by Reaney 
& Neafy, of Philadelphia, Lee & 
Earned, of New York, Silsby Manu¬ 
facturing Company, of Seneca Falls, 
New York, the Amoskeag Manufact¬ 
uring Company, the Boston Locomo¬ 
tive Works, and many others. Lee 
& Lamed make most of the engines 
for the New York City Fire Depart¬ 
ment. 

The Amoskeag engines work with 
vertical cylinders and pumps, thereby 
avoiding much of the shaking that 
makes other machines objectionable. 
The arrangement of their guage cocks 
is also peculiar. They cover the whole 
side of the boiler, thus showing 
immediately the height of the water, 
and this enables the engine to make 
steam with very little water and in 
a very short time. They weigh about 


six thousand pounds, and are drawn 
by horses. 

In the Silsby, the engine and pump 
are rotary. They are made to be 
drawn by men or by horses. The 
smallest are from 3,800 to 4,300 
pounds weight, including fuel, water 
and hose. They throw a 1J inch 
stream 250 feet, with forty pounds of 
steam. These are intended to be 
drawn by men. The larger ones 
weigh from 5,100 to 5,800 pounds. 
They will throw two one-inch 
streams, 240 feet, and will raise 
steam and be at work in four minutes. 
One great advantage of the Holly 
pump is that it runs steadily, no 
chocking being required to keep the 
engine in place, as is the case with 
all engines using reciprocating pumps. 


FROST BITE. 

Exposure to the cold, of severe 
degree, often leaves the fingers and 
toes, nose, ears and lips, more or less 
frozen. This condition, short of abso¬ 
lute death of the part, is termed frost 
bite. 

When the circulation of any part 
begins to succumb to the influence of 
the cold, it becomes puffy, blueish, and 
smarting. This is because the blood 
moves more slowly than natural 
through the vessels exposed near the 
surface. Soon this blueness disappears, 
and the part becomes pallid, as if the 
influence of the cold had contracted 
the vessels to an extent incompatible 
with the passage of blood through 
them. The pain at this point ceases ; 
indeed, until he meets a friend, he 
often does not know of his mishap. 
At this stage, the injury has become 
so great that, unless proper means are 
taken to restore circulation, complete 
death of the part ensues, and in du^ 







400 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


time it sloughs away, and is detached 
from the line of living tissue. 

What takes place in a part of the 
body, known as frost bite, may take 
place in the whole of it, which is 
known as “frozen to death.” The 
blood of the extremities being gradu¬ 
ally forced from them, under the con¬ 
tinued subjection to the cold, is forced 
inward upon the larger blood vessels, 
heart, lungs, and brain. There is in¬ 
creasing difficulty in breathing, owing 
to the engorged state of the chest, and, 
what should always be remembered by 
one so exposed to cold, an unconquera¬ 
ble desire to sleep. To sleep, then, is 
to die. If the person exhibits such a 
symptom, he must, by all means, be 
kept constantly moving. 

Treatment. — Persons exposed like 
those just described, must be treated 
promptly, and with one thing never 
lost sight of,—that is, keep the frozen 
person away from the heat. A person 
taken up insensible, or approaching it, 
from exposure to the cold, should be 
taken into a cold room, his clothing re¬ 
moved, and he thoroughly rubbed with 
snow, or cloths wrung out with ice 
water. The friction to every part of 
the body, particularly the extremities, 
must be continued for some time, until 
signs of returning animation appear. 
When the frozen limbs show signs of 
life, the person should be carefully 
dried; put in a cold bed in a cold 
room; artificial respiration used until 
the natural is established; then 
brandy given, also ginger tea and beef 
tea. Usually, by this time, medical 
advice will have been secured, to direct 
further treatment. Should it not, do 
not forget that the patient is to be 
brought by degrees into rather warmer 
air ; and, lest in some part there might 
still be defective circulation, the 
person should be kept away from ex¬ 


posure to the heat of the fire. Milder 
degrees of the same condition, as sus¬ 
pension of life in the ear, nose, finger, 
or toe, from exposure to cold, must be 
treated with the same general di¬ 
rections in view. The part should be 
kept away from the heat, and rubbed 
with handfuls of snow, or towels 
dipped in cold water, until circulation 
appears re-established. 


FIRST YESSEL BUILT IN MASSACHU¬ 
SETTS. 


The first vessel ever built in Mass¬ 
achusetts was a ship launched at 
Mystic, now Medford, on the 4th of 
July, 1631, and named by Governor 
Winthrop, to whom she belonged, 
The Blessing of the Bay. In the 
course of the season this vessel made 
several coasting trips, and soon after 
visited Manhattan Island, New York. 
“On this occasion,” says Governor 
Winthrop, “the sailors were surprised 
on seeing, on Long Island, Indian 
canoes of great size. ” Another vessel 
of 60 tons, called the Rebecca, was 
built in 1633, at Medford, where Mr. 
Cradoch had a ship yard. A ship of 
120 tons was built at Marblehead by 
the people of Salem, in 1636. The 
business of ship building appears to 
have received its first impulse about 
this time from the same cause which 
threw the colonists upon their own 
resources for the supply of many of the 
necessaries of life. The first ship built 
in Boston, of which we have anv 
record, was the Trial, of about 160 
tons. She sailed for Bilboa on the 4th 
day of June, 1642, with Thomas Graves 
as master, laden with fish, which she 
sold there at a good rate, and from 
thence she freighted to Malaga, and 
arrived there March 23, 1643, laden 
with wine, fruit, oil, iron and wool, 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


401 


which was “ a great advantage to the 
country, and gave an encouragement 
to trade.” Thus early began the 
circuitous and profitable trade to 
distant ports, in which colonial vessels, 
at no remote period, bore so prominent 
a part. In 1642, five other vessels 
were built at Boston, Plymouth, Dor¬ 
chester and Salem; and in 1644, two 
of 250 and 200 tons, respectively, were 
built at Cambridge and Boston. The 
first large ship built in Boston was 
one of 300 tons, in 1646. 


CAST IRON PLOWS. 

In the early, and almost the recent, 
days of American agriculture, the prin¬ 
cipal farm implements were the plow, 
harrow, scythe, sickle and rake. The 
plow and harrow were worked by 
horses or oxen — the others by hand. 
The great improvements which have 
been made of late years enable us to 
do most of this work by horse-power ; 
and thus greatly lighten hard labor. 
But all attempts to break the soil by 
steam or machinery have thus far 
failed. The attention of farmers and 
agricultural machinists has, therefore, 
been specially directed to the material 
and formation of the plow, in order to 
secure the most satisfactory results at 
the smallest expense. 

In the earlier colonial days, there 
were no plows in America. The lands 
were cleared and turned by mattocks 
and hoes. It was customary then for 
the fortunate owners of plows to travel 
about the country, working them, as 
the scissor-grinders do now. In 1637, 
Massachusetts had thirty seven plows. 
In 1648, Virginia had one hundred and 
fifty. In New England a bounty was 
paid in many towns to persons who 
would keep a plow and do this itiner¬ 
ant work. 


The old fashioned plow was a clumsy 
thing, made of wood throughout. 
The French settlers in Illinois were, 
probably, the first to use iron in a 
plow — their machine consisting of a 
small iron point tied to the plow with 
a strip of raw hide. The Corey plow, 
with a clumsy wrought iron share, and 
all the rest wood, was most exten¬ 
sively used in the Atlantic States, 
during the last century. Another, 
called the “bull plow” was also exten¬ 
sively used . The landside was a flat 
bar. The point was a lump of iron, 
shaped like half a lance-head. The 
mould-board was wood, most awkward¬ 
ly fastened. 

The first patent for a cast-iron plow 
was secured by Charles Newbold, of 
Burlington, New Jersey, in 1797. It 
combined the mould-board, share and 
landside, cast together. It was a great 
improvement on the old plow; and 
Peacock, who patented another plow 
in 1807, paid Newbold $500 for the 
privilege of using parts of the ideas 
involved in that invention. James 
Small had invented a cast-iron mould 
board in Scotland, in 1740, but he ad¬ 
hered to the wrought-iron share. The 
cast-iron share was the first used in 
America. 

Newbold’s machine attracted great 
attention. In 1798, Thomas Jefferson 
gave it his attention; and wrote a trea¬ 
tise on the form of the mould board, 
giving his idea of what its exact form 
and curvature, mathematically calcula¬ 
ted, should be. From that time a great 
deal of attention was paid to the plow; 
and it is now considered to have almost 
reached perfection. One great advance 
has been in the adaptation of different 
forms of plows to different soils. The 
money value of the plow has also been 
greatly decreased, by its manufacture 
in large factories and by machinery. 









402 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


instead of by the slow and laborious 
process of the country blacksmith- 
shops. More than four hundred 
patents for improvements in plows 
have been issued from the United 
States patent office since Newbold’s 
invention. 


EARLIEST MODERN NEWSPAPER. 

It seems that to Italy the world is 
indebted for the origin of the news¬ 
paper. Centuries before the Christian 
era, or, to give the precise date accord¬ 
ing to the best authorities, 691 B. C., 
a daily journal called the Acta Diurna 
was published at Rome. It was not in 
the form of the printed paper sheet that 
is now-a-days left at every intelligent 
man’s door in the early morning ; nor 
was it issued in copious editions and 
circulated among the subscribers for 
a stipulated consideration. The Acta 
Diurna was a public enterprise, sup¬ 
ported by government, and the few 
copies struck off in Latin script upon 
white wooden tablets were hung at 
conspicuous points in the streets and 
the frequented places of the city, and 
gave to the curious passer-by the latest 
intelligence of current events. With 
the downfall of the Western Empire, 
journalism perished ; and for upward 
of a thousand dreary years it was one 
of the lost and forgotten arts. 

By Italian genius it was finally 
revived again, and Venice was the 
scene of its second birth. There are 
now in the Magliabechia Library at 
Florence thirty volumes of the oldest 
modern newspaper of which we have 
any knowledge. It was entitled Gazetta , 
as some say, from the word Gazzera , 
signifying magpie or chatterer. And, 
according to others, from the name 
of the small coin for which the paper 
was sold. It was published at Venice 


once a month by order of the govern¬ 
ment, and continued to be written in 
script, even after printing had been 
invented. The last number is dated 

in the sixteenth centurv. The earliest 

%/ 

French journal, the Gazette de France 
a newspaper still in existence, we be¬ 
lieve, was edited by Renaudot, a 
physician in Paris. It appeared as a 
weekly, the initial nunber being issued 
in April, 1631. It was patronized by 
the King Louis XIII., and contained 
at least one article penned by the 
Royal hand. It also enjoyed the 
support of Cardinal Richelieu. 

The British Museum preserves some 
copies of a newspaper called the En¬ 
glish Mercurie, and professing to have 
been printed under the authority of 
Queen Elizabeth in 1588. The title of 
one of the numbers reads thus: — 
u The English Mercurie , published by 
authority, for the prevention of false 
reports, imprinted by Christopher Bar- 
lur, Her Highness’s printer, No. 50.” 
In it .is an account of the Spanish 
Armada, under the heading: u A 
journall of what passed since the 21st 
of this month, between her majestie’s 
fleet and that of Spayne, transmitted 
by the Lord High Admiral to the 
Lordes of council.” But the papers 
were not published at the date and in 
the circumstances pretended. They 
have been proved to be clever forgeries, 
executed about 1766. In 1622, during 
the reign of James I., a paper appeared 
under the title of the London Weekly 
Courant. In 1643, in the time of the 
Civil War, a variety of publications, 
claiming unworthily the office and 
name of newspaper were produced; but 
in fact, the first genuine news journal 
published in England was established 
by Sir Roger L’ Estrange in 1665. It 
bore the name of the Public Intelli¬ 
gence r, and survived until the London 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


403 


Gazette was transferred from Oxford to 
London, in February, 1866. The first 
regular newspaper produced in the 
United States was the Boston News¬ 
letter , which appeared April 24, 1704. 
In September, 1698, an enterprising 
printer in Boston had undertaken to 
start a newspaper, but the first edition 
was suppressed by the authorities, and 
only one copy is now known to exist. 


THE MANUFACTURE OF WALL AND 
DECORATIVE PAPER HANGINGS. 


There is scarcely a branch of manu¬ 
facture that has increased to such an 
extent as the production of paper 
hangings and fresco decorations. It is 
but a comparatively short time since 
the walls of dwelling houses were all 
painted, but very few persons using 
paper, as the manufacture of paper 
hanging was very limited and cost 
quite a large sum in comparing their 
cost with the prices at the present 
• time. This house was the first who 
introduced into this country, in the 
year 1850, the manufacture of fresco 
decorations. They also claim the 
honor of introducing the first bronz¬ 
ing machine used in producing 
bronzed paper hangings in this or 
any other country ; also the first per¬ 
fect copies of all kinds of marbles and 
woods which are now used in the deco¬ 
rating of halls and public buildings. 

A brief description of their works 
and how the different kinds of paper 
are prepared and finished, will no 
doubt be interesting to all. The paper 
i 3 received from the mills in what is 
known as the raw state , in large rolls 
containing from 1,200 to 1,500 yards, 
without a break or a tear; some of 
the paper is 20 inches, some 22 and 


some is 40 inches in width, according 
to the description of goods for which 
they are intended, and that are so 
pleasing to the eye when finished. In 
the basement of one of the buildings 
is the color-mixing department, where 
the colors used in the establishment 
are mixed into all the known shades of 
color, ready for printing the paper. 
Here are vats, tubs, pails, grinding 
machines, etc., of every description 
necessary for the business. Here is 
also prepared the u grounding ” made 
from various clays brought from New 
Jersey, Georgia and South Carolina. 
English china clay and Paris white 
are also used to a large extent. The 
New Jersey clay is the finest and re¬ 
ceives the finish polish and is used in 
preparing or grounding what is known 
as satin paper. In an adjoining room 
is the polishing department. Here 
are patent furnishing or satining 
machines. These machines are a great 
improvement over the old style of 
machines as they require but one large 
cylinder brush with five smooth iron 
rollers that polishes the surface evenly 
and smoothly at once, while the old 
machines worked the brushes on top, 
and the rollers underneath ; after the 
paper leaves these machines it is ready 
for printing in colors, bronzing or em¬ 
bossing in gold. The machine for 
printing wall paper (or figured paper 
hangings) consists of cylinders of great 
diameter, carefully covered with felt, 
over which the paper passes. The 
paper is delivered from rotary spindles, 
the end of which is caught up by ma¬ 
chinery and passed to the cylinder. 
The color boxes are set below the cen¬ 
tre of the cylinder, and the color is 
passed to the color block (or die) by 
means of an endless cloth or blanket; 
the color block is then applied to the 
paper by the motion of the machine 







404 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


and the desired impression given. For 
each color on a pattern of paper there 
are separate blocks ; and the machines 
are so perfect, each block touches the 
paper in the exact place required, so 
that eight, twelve or more colors are 
put on the pattern with one revolution 
of the large cylinder. After the paper 
has passed through the printing ma¬ 
chine, it passes to the hanging-up racks, 
which carry it along by means of an 
endless belt in loops of sixteen feet or 
more, passing over steam-pipes which 
dry it before reaching the end of the 
rack. At the end of the rack are roll¬ 
ing machines, which rolls the paper by 
means of split spindles. There is also 
attached a knife for cutting the paper 
to the desired lengths. These machines 
are capable of running of about 2,500 
rolls each, per day. The bronzing ma¬ 
chines are similar to those above de¬ 
scribed, except that varnish is applied 
in printing the pattern instead of col¬ 
or. The bronze powder is applied and 
it is then returned to the brushing or 
polishing machine; they remove the 
surplus metal and burnish that which 
remains upon the paper forming the 
pattern or figure. The next is the 
block-cutting department. Here the 
most skillful workmen are employed. 
Sugar maple is the wood that is mostly 
used. First the designs are traced on 
the wood, then strips of brass are in¬ 
serted to form the outline of the fig¬ 
ures, the surplus wood being chipped 
off. Inside of the figure, formed by 
the strip of brass, is filled in with felt, 
so as to receive the color. Each color 
requires a separate block or roller, and 
some of the elaborate designs require 
ten or twelve different rollers. Next 
are what is called fine gilt, hand-made 
goods, which are produced by hand¬ 
printing. This method is yet une¬ 
qualed by machinery in the production 


of this class of goods. We next enter 
the room that is known as the gold 
stamping room. In this process the 
paper is sprinkled with powdered shel¬ 
lac where the figure is to be stamped; 
this is covered with gold leaf. It is 
then passed between steam heated 
plates, with metal dies secured to their 
surface, or beneath the hot plates of a 
powerful stamping press. The surface 
leaf is then brushed off and turned 
into bronzing powder. All the dies for 
this class of goods are cut from brass. 
We now come to the hand printing and 
flocking department: flocked or velvet 
paper is made by the application of 
various colored wools ground to powder 
and set, or flocked, on to the paper by 
means of gold size ; the ground wools 
used in this process are imported. In 
hand printing but one color at a time 
can be applied. The color blocks are 
cut on a flat surface and a strap at¬ 
tached to the back, (similar to a horse 
brush,) by which means the workman, 
after dipping the face of the block on 
the color tray, can apply it to the 
paper drawn under him on the print¬ 
ing table, and by means of a lever at¬ 
tached to the table or press, the block 
is pressed down on the paper and leaves 
the impression in proper color and de¬ 
sired pattern. In the hand bronzing 
and fresco decorations, the bronze is 
applied by hand blocks with gold size. 
The paper is then run through ma¬ 
chines, in which rollers distribute the 
bronze powder over the surface and 
it is then hung up to dry. 

After drying, the surplus powder is 
removed by passing the paper through 
the dusting machines. The colors are 
afterward imprinted in addition to the 
bronzing, by passing them over the 
printing tables, and each color is 
stamped with its appropriate block, 
as above described. In the manufact- 




THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


405 


ure of paper hangings and fresco deco¬ 
rations, a description of which we have 
given above, the house of Robt. Graves 
& Co. stand at the head of the business 
in this country. 


COTTON-CULTURE. 

The great usefulnesss and enormous 
manufacture and sale of this fabric, 
and the especial adaptability of the 
soil of the Southern United States to 
its growth, make it a subject of great 
interest to the people of America. It 
represents so vast a wealth as to always 
hold a prominent place in the financial 
politics of our country. For three- 
quarters of a century, the boast of the 
Southerner was that “Cotton is King”; 
and until the inexhaustible agricultur¬ 
al resources of the Great West became 
available, his boast was strictly true. 

The appearance of the plant in 
growth is so beautiful as to baffle de¬ 
scription. People who have never seen 
it can form no idea of the uniform and 
delicately beautiful appearance of a 
cotton plantation. In the first stages 
of its growth, it is nearly all leaf of a 
peculiarly rich, dark green. Often, in 
the old time, the traveler could see 
thousands of acres of it in one contin¬ 
uous expanse, broken only by an 
occasional roadway, or a long, crooked 
line of rail-fence. When the plant is 
in full bloom, it presents a gorgeous 
sight. The leaves, although thick, are 
entirely concealed by the white bolls ; 
the fields are like one broad sea of 
glistening white — whiter than snow ; 
and the houses and “ gins ” that, here 
and there, dot its surface, look like 
islands in the bright and quiet sea. 

Columbus found cotton in Cuba, in 
1492, when he made his first landing 
in the New World. Cortez found it in 
Mexico, and Magellan found it in Bra¬ 


zil. In 1519, Pizarro found it in Peru, 
and de Vaca found it in California. 
Thus we find that it grew from ocean 
to ocean, throughout nearly all the 
middle third of the Great American 
Continent. There are three species, all 
of which were seen in all these coun¬ 
tries— the herb, which grows annually, 
the shrub, which lasts from three to five 
years, and the tree, which has a life of 
about twenty years. The cotton of the 
United States is cultivated entirely 
from the herb. Since our great war, 
its cultivation has been attempted, ex¬ 
perimentally, in some of the Northern 
States, but it cannot be lucratively 
cultivated north of Tennessee and 
North Carolina. The best quality and 
the largest yield are in South Carolina, 
Florida, Southern Georgia, Alabama 
and Mississippi and Central Louisiana. 
The first labor expended on it was in 
South Carolina; and that State furn¬ 
ishes the finest fibre. That State is 
famous for the celebrated “ Sea Island” 
cotton, so called from the islands along 
the coast of South Carolina and 
Georgia, the seed from which, by con¬ 
stant culture, has developed the finest 
and softest material. This quality has 
also spread throughout the extreme 
southern part of the United States, 
and is much superior to the cotton 
grown on the uplands, farther North, 
where the same seed, brought from the 
sea shore, rapidly deteriorates. 

Cotton is of slow growth, and its 
productiveness and quality depend 
greatly upon the length of the warm 
season. In the far South, where the 
summer is longest, it attains the great¬ 
est growth and the finest texture. The 
cotton-fields of Tennessee and North 
Carolina look almost like sage-brush in 
comparison with the luxuriant fields 
of the sea-coast. In Louisiana it is 
planted in February. The harvest 








406 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


generally commences about the first of 
August, and continues for more than 
three months. In this low latitude, 
the fields are generally picked three 
times over. In the northern region, 
such as Kentucky, Tennessee, North 
Carolina, Northern Mississippi, Alaba¬ 
ma and Georgia, the planting season is 
later, the shrub smaller, and the yield 
much less. The writer has known a 
plantation on Red River to yield three 
bales (fifteen hundred pounds) to the 
acre. In the uplands, a smart negro 
cotton-picker used to average from 
four to six hundred per day. On the 
richest fields of Louisiana, an ambi¬ 
tious fellow could exceed one thousand 
pounds. But the cotton as picked in 
the field is vastly heavier than that 
known to commerce, as it contains all 
the seed, which is nearly two-thirds of 
the whole weight. For instance. Fif¬ 
teen hundred pounds of u raw cotton,' 1 
after passing the gin and being packed 
in the bale, weighs about five hundred 
pounds. 

The separation of the cotton from 
the seed is the first and most important 
item of its manufacture. This is done 
by a machine known as the “ cotton 
gin. 11 The seeds are remarkably plen¬ 
tiful (“ thicker than seeds of a water¬ 
melon, 11 ) and adhere with great tenac¬ 
ity to the cotton. Consequently great 
force is required to tear them apart. 
The early gins were merely sets of 
rollers, by which the cotton was torn 
away from the seed, and passed through 
the rollers, leaving the seed behind. 
The process was tedious and incom¬ 
plete. The present gin is a very sim¬ 
ple but ingenious machine, invented by 
Mr. Whitney, a Connecticut gentle¬ 
man, shortly before the commencement 
of the present century. It is called 
the “saw gin. 11 It consists of a row 
of circular saws, placed very close to 


each other, on a revolving cylinder. 
Before the cylinder is a mouth for re¬ 
ceiving the cotton, and behind it are 
brushes to brush the clear cotton from 
the saw-teeth. The saws revolve rapid¬ 
ly, tearing the cotton off, and leaving 
the seeds to drop through the mouth 
in front. 

The invention of this machine 
caused an immediate and enormous 
increase in the culture of cotton, and 
made the plant, as a mercantile staple, 
a power in the commercial world. The 
first exportation thereof was from 
Charleston, South Carolina, in 1784. 
Its extent was eight bales. The crop 
of 1874 was nearly five million bales. 


DAGUERREOTYPES. 

Discoveries in science are the result 
either of experiment, of thought, or of 
chance. 

Daguerre’s discovery of the influence 
of the vapor of mercury upon sensi¬ 
tive plates of silver is one which is 
included among chance discoveries. 
He had been experimenting on silver 
plates rendered sensitive by iodine, and 
had, after exposure, put them in a cup¬ 
board of chemicals. To his surprise he 
found, after a time, pictures developed 
themselves on the plates. Attributing 
the effect to some chemical, he re¬ 
moved the chemicals one by one, until 
all had been removed. The effect, 
however, continued. He then found 
an unknown and forgotten flask of 
mercury, which gave out its vapor, 
and thus produced the effect observed 
— and this was the origin of the 
Daguerreotype process. But this was 
not purely the result of chance. It 
was the previous training and pre¬ 
vious experience which arranged the 
conditions that led to the discovery, 
and which enabled the mind to seize 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


407 


upon those very facts which resulted 
in success. Training and experience 
are therefore essential in seizing upon 
abnormal indications of Nature, as 
they are in comprehending and ap¬ 
preciating her laws and applying them 
effectively to practice. — Telegraphic 
Journal. 


PHOTOGRAPHY IN AMERICA. 

It is not generally known that Prof. 
Morse, the inventor of the electric 
telegraph, was the first to introduce 
photography in America. The fol¬ 
lowing letter, written by him to the 
Philadelphia Photographer , gives an 
interesting account of his connection 
With this branch of art:— 

New York, Nov. 18th, 1871. 

Edward L. Wilson, Esq., Dear Sir: 
—In your letter of the 10th instant, 
you ask of me a sketch of my connec¬ 
tion with the photographic art. I 
cheerfully comply with your request. 

In 1838, I visited Europe with my 
telegraphic invention, and early in 
the spring of 1839, in Paris, 1 formed 
the acquaintance of M. Daguerre, 
whose discovery of fixing the image 
of the camera obscura, in connection 
with M. Niepce, was creating a great 
sensation in the scientific world. 

A proposition at this time was before 
the French Chamber of Deputies, to 
grant to Messrs. Daguerre and Niepce 
a pension on condition that their pro¬ 
cess was given to the public. M. 
Daguerre had very freely shown to 
high officials the result of his process, 
but by the advice of the distinguished 
Arago, who had charge of the pension 
proposal in the Chambers, he abstained 
from any publicity of his results until 
his pension should be secured. At this 
same time my telegraph was exciting 
in the French capital a similar sensa¬ 


tion. I had made my arrangements to 
leave Paris for home in March of 1839, 
and one morning in conversation with 
our eminent and worthy consul, Robert 
Walsh, Esq., I lamented the necessity 
of leaving Paris without seeing these 
photographic results. He at once 
entered into my feelings, and said : u I 
think you will find no difficulty in ob¬ 
taining a sight of them. Drop a note 
to M. Daguerre, and invite him to see 
the telegraph, and I have no doubt he 
will return the compliment by invit¬ 
ing you to see his results.” The plan 
was successful. M. Daguerre invited 
me to see his results at his diorama, 
where he had his laboratory, and the 
day after, accepted my invitation to 
witness the operation of my telegraph; 
and it is a noticeable incident that 
during the two hours in which he 
was with me, his diorama and labora¬ 
tory, and the beautiful results I had 
seen the day before, were consumed by 
fire. In my interview with him, how¬ 
ever, 1 requested him, so soon as his 
pension bill was passed, and the pub¬ 
lication of his process was made, to 
send me a copy of his work, which he 
courteously promised to do, and accord¬ 
ingly, in the summer of 1839,1 received 
from him probably the first copy which 
came to America. From this copy, in 
which, of course, were the drawings of 
the necessary apparatus, I had con¬ 
structed the first daguerreotype appa¬ 
ratus made in the United States. My 
first effort with it was on a small plate 
of silvered copper, about the size of a 
playing card, procured from a hardware 
store; but defective as it was, I ob¬ 
tained a good representation of the 
Church of the Messiah in Broadway, 
taken from a back window in the New 
York City University. This was, of 
course, before the construction of the 
New York Hotel. This I believe to 










408 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


have been the first photograph ever 
taken in America. Perceiving in its 
earlier stages that photography was an 
invaluable and incalculable aid to the 
arts of design, I practiced it for many 
months, taking pupils, many of whom 
at this day are among the most pros¬ 
perous photographers. I early made 
arrangements to experiment with my 
eminent friend and colleague in the 
University, Prof, John W. Draper, 
building for the purpose a photograph- 
studio upon the top of the University. 
Here I believe were made the first 
successful attempts by Dr. Draper in 
taking photographic portraits with the 
eyes open , I having succeeded in tak¬ 
ing portraits with the eyes shut , for it 
was considered at that date that the 
clear sunlight upon the face was nec¬ 
essary to a result. 

And here it should be stated, that 
in reply to the question which I put 
to Mons. Daguerre, Cannot you apply 
this to portraiture? he gave it as his 
opinion that it would be impractica¬ 
ble, because in obtaining his results 
on still objects, the time necessary 
was from fifteen to twenty minutes, 
and he believed it impossible for any 
one to preserve an immovable posi¬ 
tion for that length of time. The 
quick Or instantaneous process was 
not then discovered, Thus you have, 
in brief, my connection with the art, 
which owes its existence to Messrs. 
Daguerre and Niepce, and in which 1 
profess to be only a humble follower. 
The wonderful improvements which 
have since been made by scores of in¬ 
genious men in various countries have 
established the photographic art as 
one of the most useful, as well as beau¬ 
tiful, discoveries of the age. 

With respect, 

Your obedient servant, 

Sam’l F. B. Morse. 


SAMUEL F. B. MORSE. 


It has often been noticed that the 
men to whom the world owes its 
greatest debts have been farthest 
removed from the spheres of action 
in which their inventive genius has 
most shown itself. A portrait-painter, 
Robert Fulton, was the father of 
steam navigation. And another por¬ 
trait-painter, Professor Morse, was the 
father of the telegraph system, and a 
stepfather of photography. 

Samuel Finley Breese Morse was 
born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, 
April 29th, 1791. His father was a 
clergyman, well remembered among 
our elder people as the author of the 
celebrated “ Morse’s Geography, ” 
which was a standard school book 
until the political changes of the 
world required a new one. Professor 
Morse was carefully and thoroughly 
educated, and graduated at Yale Col¬ 
lege in 1810. He had a passion for 
painting, and chose it as the profes¬ 
sion of his life. He was a warm per¬ 
sonal friend of Washington Allston, 
and went to England with him in 
1811. Charles Robert Leslie, visiting 
that country soon after, fell in with 
Morse, and a close friendship, which 
lasted through life, sprang up between 
the two young painters. In London, 
Morse pursued his studies under 
Copley and West. In 1815, he re¬ 
turned to America, and commenced the 
profession of his art in Boston. There 
he did not do well. After a short 
sojourn, he went to New Hampshire, 
and earned a nomadic living by paint¬ 
ing portraits at fifteen dollars apiece. 
Thence he went to Charleston, South 
Carolina, where he found plenty of 
work at sixty dollars instead of fif¬ 
teen. In 1824, he painted a portrait 
of LaFayette for the city of New 
























































































THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


409 


York. In 1829, lie went again to 
Europe, and plied liis pencil in En¬ 
gland, France and Italy. 

While in college lie was an enthu¬ 
siastic student of chemistry. In 1826 
he made a careful study of the electro¬ 
magnet. This study convinced him 
of the practicability of sending mes¬ 
sages between remote points by elec¬ 
tricity. This idea became the ruling 
passion of his life, and gave to the 
world the greatest and most valuable 
of its inventions. In 1835, he had 
made a telegraphic instrument which 
was operated successfully, as seen by 
all his personal friends. In 1837 he 
made another and an improved one, 
and was then able to send messages 
from both ends of his little wire. In 
1838 he went to Washington to peti¬ 
tion Congress for aid to build a line 
of telegraph from Washington to Bal¬ 
timore ; but the wise heads of the 
nation laughed at the idea as an 
impossibility. In 1842 he renewed 
the struggle, and Congress appro¬ 
priated $30,000 for the Washington 
and Baltimore line. And then the 
telegraph was born. The little line, 
twenty-five miles long, was the pre¬ 
cursor of millions of miles of tele¬ 
graph wire, which now bind all the 
great, busy world into one bee-hive. 

Professor Morse lived to see his 
invention become a necessity in all 
lands, and to receive honors for it 
from every civilized government. He 
died in New York, April 2d, 1873. 


HOW THE FRENCH BRING DROWNED 
MEN BACK TO LIFE. 


The author of The French at Home 
says that in his walk, one morning, he 
saw a man pulled out of the water, 
apparently drowned. He was laid on 
the right side, the face turned toward 


the ground, and the jaws open to facili¬ 
tate the escape of water. Several 
times the head was placed a little 
lower than the rest of the body for 
the same purpose, but only for a few 
seconds at a time. In the meanwhile 
there was a regular manipulating pro¬ 
cess to induce breathing, which con¬ 
sisted in pressing the abdomen, stom¬ 
ach and sides of the chest, but softly. 
The efforts were without effect; the 
man looked as if he had seen the last 
of earth. Then the prostrate figure 
was carried to the nearest station for 
the rescue of the drowned. Here the 
man was stripped and wiped dry, and he 
laid, turned down on the side, between 
two blankets on a mattress; the man¬ 
ipulating process was resumed, with 
intervals of about a quarter of a min¬ 
ute between each pressure of the body, 
the pressure being repeated fifteen or 
twenty times, followed by a suspension 
of twenty minutes. Twenty minutes 
passed in this way, when a physician, 
employed on this kind of service, ap¬ 
peared and took charge of the case. 
A warming-pan filled with hot water 
was passed over the body outside of 
the blanket, particularly over the pit 
of the stomach and the sides of the 
chest. This was alternated with a gen¬ 
tle friction of hot woolen mittens and 
the naked hands, and the soles of the 
feet and palms of the hands were vigo¬ 
rously rubbed. An operator breathed 
into the mouth of the man by means 
of a tube. 

These efforts were also proving 
in vain, the physician had recourse 
to the introduction of tobacco smoke 
into the intestines. In about ten min¬ 
utes the man gave a feeble sign of life, 
whereupon all manipulation was dis¬ 
continued lest it should interfere with 
the natural movement. Soon he 
showed a desire to vomit. How long 








410 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the process lasted is not stated, but 
the reader will see that it was lengthy. 
A few days after, the writer attended a 
ball, and among the most lively dan¬ 
cers, he saw the drowned man. 


COSTUMES IN ANCIENT TIMES. 

Julius Agricola, being appointed to 
the command in Britain, A. D. 78, suc¬ 
ceeded in perfectly establishing the 
Roman dominion and introducing the 
Roman manners and language. u The 
sons of the British chieftains,” says 
Tacitus, “began to atfect our dress. 
The braccce were abandoned by the 
Southern and Eastern Britons, and the 
Roman tunic, reaching to the knee, 
with the cloak or mantle called the 
sagum , became the habit of the better 
classes. The change in the female 
garb was little, if any, as it had 
originally been similar to that of 
the Roman women. The coins of 
Carausius and the columns of Tanjan 
and Antonine exhibit the Celtic fe¬ 
males in two tunics; the lower one 
reaching to the ankles and the upper 
about half-way down the thigh, with 
loose sleeves extending only to the 
elbows, like those of the German 
women described by Tacitus. This 
upper garment was sometimes confined 
by a girdle and was called in British 
gwn , the gunacum of Varo, and the 
origin of our word gown. The hair of 
both sexes was cut and dressed after 
the Roman fashion. Some change 
must have taken place in the apparel 
of the Anglo-Saxons after their con¬ 
version to Christianity at the begin¬ 
ning of the seventh century ; for at a 
council held at the close of the eighth, 
it was said, “ you put on your garments 
in the manner of pagans whom your 
fathers expelled from the world; 
an astonishing thing that you should 


imitiate those whose life you always 
hated.” From the testimony of vari¬ 
ous writers we are led to conclude that 
little alteration in dress took place 
amongst the masters of Britain for 
nearly four hundred years. The civil 
costume of the Anglo-Saxons, from 
the eighth to the tenth century con¬ 
sisted then of a linen shirt, a tunic of 
linen or woolen, according to the sea¬ 
son, descending to the knee, and hav¬ 
ing long, close sleeves, but which set 
in wrinkles, or rather rolls, from the 
elbow to the wrist. It was made like 
the shirt, and open at the neck to put 
on in the same manner. It was some¬ 
times open at the sides and confined 
by a belt or girdle round the waist. 
Drawers reaching half-way down the 
thigh, and stockings meeting them, are 
alluded to by writers under the names 
of brecli and hose. Scin hose and 
leather hose are also mentioned and 
may mean a species of buckskin or 
short boot, now and then met with* 
or, literally, leathern stockings. To¬ 
ward the tenth century the national 
dress certainly became more magnifi¬ 
cent ; silk, which was known as early 
as the eighth century, but from its cost 
must have been exceedingly rare, was 
afterwards much worn by the higher 
classes. 

During the reign of William the 
Conqueror, from the year 1066, the 
costume consisted of the short tunic, 
the cloak, the drawers, with long 
stockings, or pantaloons with feet to 
them, called by the Normans u Chaus- 
ses.” Shoes and leg-bandages are 
worn as before. Short boots are also 
common towards the close of the reign* 
and a flat, round cap like a Scotch bon¬ 
net. The Anglo-Norman ladies were 
attired similarly to the Anglo-Saxons. 
They wore the long tunic, and over it 
a garment answering to the Saxon. 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


411 


gunna , or gown, but which the Nor¬ 
mans called a robe, and the veil or 
head-cloth, which in like manner they 
rendered couvrechef, from whence our 
word kerchief. The principal novelty 
is in the gown or robe , which was laced 
close to fit the figure, and had sleeves 
tight to the wrist, and then suddenly 
widening and falling to same depth. 
The borders of the dresses were gold 
and very broad. From the year 1087 
to 1154, there was but one striking 
novelty, and that was the rage for 
lengthening every portion of the female 
costume. The sleeves of the tunics, and 
the veils or kerchief of the ladies, ap¬ 
pear to have been so long in the reigns 
of Rufus and Henry I. as to be tied up 
in knots to avoid treading on them, 
and the trains or skirts of the gar¬ 
ments lie in immense rolls at the feet. 
In the reigns of Henry II., Richard I., 
and John, A. D. 1154 to 1216, the cor¬ 
onation robes were composed of two 
tunics: the upper with loose sleeves of 
nearly equal lengths, and girdled round 
the wrist by a rich belt, over which 
was worn the mantle, splendidly em¬ 
broidered. The female costume pre¬ 
sents the same general appearance as 
that of its predecessors. The robe has 
however, lost its extravagant cuffs, and 
the sleeves are made tight, and termin¬ 
ate at the wrist. A rich girdle loosely 
encircled the waist; and Berengaria, 
queen of Richard I. is represented with 
a small pouch called aulmoniere, and in 
form like a modern rectangle, depend¬ 
ing from it on the left side. The 
reign of Edward III., A. D. 1327 to 
1377, was one of the most important 
eras in the History of Costume. The 
habits of the ladies of this reign were 
exceedingly sumptuous and extrava¬ 
gant, passing the men in all manner of 
curious clothing ; and several distinct 
fashions appear to have existed at the 


same period. One consisted of the 
gown or kirtle, with tight sleeves some¬ 
times reaching to the wrist, sometimes 
only to the elbow ; and in the latter 
case with the same pendant streamers 
or tippets attached to them as were 
worn by the other sex. The gown 
was cut rather low in the neck, fitted 
remarkably close to the waist, and was 
occasionally worn so long, not only in 
the train, but in front, as to be neces¬ 
sarily held up when walking. An¬ 
other newer fashion was the wearing 
of a sort of spencer jacket or waist¬ 
coat, for it resembles either or rather 
all three. It had sometimes sleeves 
reaching to the wrist, at others it 
seems to be little more than a skele¬ 
ton of a garment with long and full 
skirts, wanting sides as well as sleeves, 
or at least the arm-holes cut so large 
that the girdle of the kirtle worn 
under it was visible at the hips. The 
cote-hardie was also worn by the 
ladies in this reign, buttoned down 
the front like that of the men, 
sometimes with tippets at the elbows ; 
and there is an appearance of pockets 
in some of the cuts representing the 
styles of dress of this period. They 
wore rings of gold set with diamonds, 
rubies and sapphires ; and also with 
ornamental stones, or amulets to pre¬ 
vent any venomous infection. 

At the tournaments and public 
shows the ladies rode in parti-colored 
tunics, one-half being one color and 
the other half of another, with short 
hoods, or liripipes , (the long tails or 
tippets of the hoods) wrapped about 
their heads like chords. In the twen¬ 
ty-second year of Edward III.’s reign 
was founded the most noble Order of 
the Garter. The circumstance that 
suggested his choice of this symbol is 
another mystery, but all writers of any 
credit, combine to reject the popular 







412 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


tradition which assigns to the acciden¬ 
tal fall of a lady’s garter (the Queen’s 
or a Countess of Salisbury) at a grand 
festival. Sir E. Ashmole, in his His¬ 
tory of Orders, considers the garter as 
a symbol of union and in this opinion 
he is followed by Sir Walter Scott and 
Sir Samuel Meyrick. Camden says 
that Edward gave forth his own garter 
as a signal for a battle that sped well, 
while other authorities doubt that gar¬ 
ters were worn by men in those days. 
The leg-bandages abandoned in the 
previous century have no affinity to 
the short garter and buckle which 
forms the badge of this celebrated 
Order. In the time of Richard II. 
they wore long-toed shoes, which were 
fastened to the knee with chains of 
gold and silver. The tight sleeves of 
the preceding years were now out of 
fashion, and the Monk of Everham 
speaks of the deep, wide sleeves, com¬ 
monly called pokys , shaped like a bag¬ 
pipe, and worn indifferently by ser¬ 
vants as well as masters. He says 
the}^ were denominated the devil’s 
receptacles, for whatever could be 
stolen was popped into them. Some 
were so long and so wide that they 
reached to the feet, and others to the 
knees. As the servants were bringing 
up pottage and sauces, their sleeves 
would go into them and have the first 
taste. 

The most remarkable feature of the 
civil costume of the fifteenth cen¬ 
tury was the more frequent appearance 
of caps and hats of fantastic shapes, 
and the alternation of the chaperon 
from an almost indescribable bundle 
into a regularly-formed crown, with 
a thick roll called the roundlet, and 
having a long tippet attached to it 
which trailed on the ground. The 
female costume comprises, like that of 
the other sex, all the previous fashions, 


with fantastic additions too numerous 
to detail in words. Gowns with enor¬ 
mous trains, girdled tightly at the 
waist, and with turn-over collars of fur 
or velvet, coming to a point in front, 
and disclosing sometimes a square-cut 
under waist or stomacher of a different 
color to the robe. The sleeves are of 
all descriptions, but the waist is ex¬ 
ceedingly short, as in Henry Y.’s reign. 

The shoes worn in 1523 were as 
absurdly broad at the toes as they 
were previously peaked or pointed. 
The new fashion is said to have com¬ 
menced in Flanders about 1470. Par- 
adin says that the two-feet long pon- 
laines were succeeded by shoes denom¬ 
inated duck-bills, the toes being so 
shaped, but still four or five fingers 
in length; and that afterwards they 
assumed a contrary fashion, wearing 
slippers so very broad in front as to 
exceed the measure of a good foot. 
About the middle of the reign of 
Elizabeth the great change took place 
that gave the female costume of the 
sixteenth century its remarkable char- 
acts?,. The body was imprisoned in 
whalebone to the hips; the partelot, 
which covered the neck to the chin, 
was removed, and an enormous ruff, 
rising gradually from the front of 
the shoulder to nearly the height of 
the head behind. From the bosom, 
now partially discovered, descended an 
interminable stomacher, on each side 
of which jutted out horizontally the 
enormous vardingale , the prototype of 
that modern-antique the hoop, which 
has been so lately banished the court. 
The cap or coif was occasionally ex¬ 
changed for a round bonnet like that of 
men, or the hair dressed in countless 
curls and adorned with ropes and stars 
of jewels, and at the close of the reign 
(for the first time) with feathers. 

In the portrait of Elizabeth, taken 






413 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


in the dress in which she went to St. 
Paul’s to return thanks for the defeat 
of the Spanish Armada in 1588, in ad¬ 
dition to the ruff, she wore a light 
mantle of some delicate stuff, with a 
high standing collar, edged with lace 
and expanding like wings on each side 
of the head. A pocket looking-glass 
was the common companion of the 
fashionables of both sexes at this time. 
The ladies carried it either in their 
pockets or hanging at their sides. In 
the reign of James I., the ladies all 
dressed in their great vardingales. 
When Sir Peter Wych was sent am¬ 
bassador from James I., his lady accom¬ 
panied him to Constantinople, and the 
Sultaness having heard much of her 
desired to see her. She was struck 
with the extraordinary extension of the 
hips of the whole party, and seriously 
inquired if that shape was peculiar 
to the natural formation of English 
women; and Lady Wych was obliged 
to explain the whole mystery of the 
dress in order to convince her that she 
and her companions were not really so 
deformed as they appeared to be. In 
the time of Charles II., the crowns of 
the hats were lower and the brims 
were turned up at the side, a row of 
feathers was placed around it, and the 
first approach was made to the cocked 
hats of the eighteenth century. So 
early as 1658, the petticoat-breeches 
had made their appearance in England, 
and the fashion of wearing long striped 
hose or stockings two yards wide at 
the top, with points through several 
eyelet-holes by which they were made 
fast to the petticoat-breeches by point¬ 
ed ribands. 

In the inventory of Charles II. we 
find a complete suit of one mate¬ 
rial under the familiar designation of 
coat, waistcoat and breeches. Panta¬ 
loons are mentioned in the same inven¬ 


tory. Neck-cloths or cravats of Brussels 
and Flanders lace were worn toward 
the close of this reign, and tied in a 
knot under the chin, the ends hanging 
down square. In the reign of James 
II. and William and Mary, shoe- 
buckles began to displace the rosettes. 
Some difficulty exists in assigning 
an exact date to their introduction. 
Buckles for shoes are mentioned as 
early as the reign of Edward IV. 
The earliest date assigned to the shoe- 
buckle properly so called is 1680. 
They became general in the reign of 
Queen Anne. 

In the time of William and Mary, 
the elegant full sleeve was replaced by a 
tight one, with a cuff above the elbow 
in imitation of the coats of the gentle¬ 
men. The hair, which had latterly 
been permitted to fall in natural ring¬ 
lets upon the shoulders, was now 
combed up like a rising billow and sur¬ 
mounted by piles of ribands and lace. 
In the time of George III., 1760, the 
hats were worn with a six inch brim. 
Some had their hats open before like a 
church spout or the scales they weigh 
flour on. Some wore them sharper, 
like the nose of a grey-hound. Round 
hats began to be worn in the morning, 
shortly after this date. The lace cra¬ 
vat was abandoned about 1735, and a 
black riband worn around the neck, 
tied in a large bow in front: to this 
succeeded white cambric stocks, buckled 
behind. About the same period the 
shirt-collar appeared and the ruffle 
vanished. The coat was made with 
lapels and a tail, being cut square in 
front above the hips, as well as the 
waistcoat which, deprived of the flaps, 
was soon made as ridiculously short as 
it had previously been long. Hoods of 
various colors were worn by ladies at 
the opera in 1711, and cherry color was 
the prevailing fashion. Scarlet stock 






414 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ings were worn by the fashionable 
belles, and they also had a practice of 
wearing black patches on various parts 
of the face. An exceedingly little 
muff was in fashion at this time. In 
1745, the caps were smaller but the 
hats were larger. Aprons had become 
part of the dress of a fashionable belle 
during the early part of this century, 
and in 1744 they reached the ground. 
Thus we see that some of the prevail¬ 
ing fashions of the last few years were 
worn by our ancestors centuries ago. 


THE OLD ELM ON BOSTON COMMON. 

Among the historic trees in this 
country perhaps none have so great a 
prominence as the Old Elm on Boston 
common. It is almost the only well- 
preserved living relic of early colonial 
times, and, historically, is as famous 
as the royal Oak of Boboscal was in i 
England. 

Boston Common, on which it stands, 
ib cvon, apart from its historic associ¬ 
ations, one of the most interesting and 
delightful places in New England. It 
is full of quiet beauties, with its shaded 
walks, play-ground, deer-park, foun¬ 
tains, birds, and grand old trees. 

Some of these trees ante-date the 
city’s charter. They were planted by 
hands that long ago crumbled to dust; 
and one of them broke ground while 
Boston was yet Shawmut, an old 
Indian village situated on three bare 
hills, with the smoke-wreaths of its 
conical wigwams crowning their sum¬ 
mits. This was the Great Tree, as it 
was called one hundred years ago, but 
which is now known as the Old Elm. 

It has grown green in spring and 
golden in autumn through all the 
green springs and golden autumns of 
New England’s history. The tree is 
the true American elm, so much 


admired for its spreading shade, its 
massive foliage, and drooping, roof¬ 
like limbs. It is seventy-two feet 
high, and twenty-three feet six inches 
in circumference at the base. 

Except when newly clothed with 
leaves in spring or crowned with the 
pomps of autumn, it retains little of 
its original beauty. It is a relic of the 
far distant past, and belongs to a gen¬ 
eration of trees that have long fed 
with their mould the flowers and the 
ferns. 

The cherished relic stands nearly in 
the centre of the Common, at the edge 
of the rising ground where was placed 
the old Liberty-Pole of historic fame. 
It is surrounded by an iron fence, on 
the gate of which is the following in¬ 
scription: 

“ This tree has been standing here for 
an unknown period. It is believed to 
have existed before the settlement of 
Boston, being full-grown in 1722. 
Exhibited marks of old age in 1792, 
and was nearly destroyed by a storm 
in 1832. Protected by an inclosure in 
1854. J. V. C. Smith, Mayor” 

The tree is protected and strength¬ 
ened by artificial supports. Iron bolts 
run through its large limbs. Its great 
trunk is filled with cement and pro¬ 
tected by canvas. Seventy years ago 
there was an opening in its trunk 
almost large enough to shelter a man, 
and to afford a hiding-place for the 
children who played at its base. But 
this rent of ruin has long been closed; 
but out of sight decay is still slowly 
going on. 

The English sparrows fly in and out 
of their little houses on the branches 
of the old tree. Boston, like Venice, 
protects the birds. As in the “ City of 
the Sea,” the hospitality of her church 
towers is extended to the doves, who 
build their nests and rear their young 
amid the ringing of the bells. 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


415 


LAPLAND GLUE. 


The bows of the Laplanders are 
composed of two pieces of wood glued 
together; one of them of birch, which 
is flexible, and the other of fir of the 
marshes, which is stiff, in order that 
the bow when bent may not break, 
and when unbent it may not bend. 
When these two pieces of wood are 
bent, all the points of contact endeavor 
to disunite themselves, and to prevent 
this the Laplanders employ the follow¬ 
ing cement: They take the skins of 
the largest perches, and having dried 
them, moisten them in cold water 
until they are so soft that they may 
be freed from the scales, which they 
throw away. They then put four or 
five of these skins in a reindeer’s blad¬ 
der, or they wrap them up in the soft 
bark of the birch-tree, in such a man¬ 
ner that the water cannot touch them, 
and place them thus covered into a 
pot of boiling water, with a stone 
above them to keep them at the bot¬ 
tom. When they have boiled about 
an hour, they take them from the 
bladder or bark, and they are then 
found to be soft or viscous. In this 
state they employ them for gluing 
together the two pieces of their bows, 
which they strongly compress and tie 
up until the glue is well dried. These 
pieces never afterwards separate. There 
is no doubt that tho Scotch whale- 
fishers, who frequently have to do 
with these people, were also aware of 
this, for, in the manufacture of Scotch 
glue, fish is largely used. 

The Russian and Italian glue is very 
good and of a light color; it is made 
from the viscid matter extracted from 
skins, parings of hides, etc., boiled to a 
jelly. The manner in which the Lon¬ 
don glue is made, and also the glue of 
several other countries of Europe, is 


by boiling in water the soft and solid 
parts of animal natter, as the muscles, 
cartilages, tendv ns, bones, hoofs, hides, 
etc.; the impur ties are then strained 
off, and the whole is boiled over again 
and again till it arrives at the proper 
consistency; it is then poured into 
glazed moulds the size of the ca <es, 
and, when sufficiently set, is laid i pon 
wire netting to dry, or hung up with a 
piece of string passed through it. The 
best glue made in England is the 
Salisbury glue, which is of very excel¬ 
lent quality. Good glue should swell 
when kept in cold water for a day or 
two; and it should be semi-transpar¬ 
ent, of a brown color, and free from 
cloudiness. 


GREAT FIRES. 

Of the fires that occurred in the 
cities of antiquity but little is known. 
They were probably numerous. His¬ 
tory mentions some that were the 
result of war. Of these, Persepolis, in 
the time of Alexander, and Rome, 
during the invasions of the Gauls, are 
conspicuous examples. Both of these 
cities were rebuilt. 

The great fire in Rome is a vivid 
historical event, and probably will 
continue so while the world endures. 
It took place in the year of Rome, 817, 
and of the Christian Era, 64, and in 
the tenth year of the reign of Nero. 

It broke out on the 19th of July, 
and lasted six days, when there was a 
short intermission; then another fire 
began, which continued three days. 
Between the two, the greater part of 
old Rome was destroyed, including its 
principal historical edifices, temples 
and palaces. 

This fire has a peculiar place ir 
history. Nero was popularly supposed 
to have kindled it. and to have pro- 









416 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


vented its being extinguished; and a 
rumor prevailed that he watched the 
flames from the tower • f one of his vil¬ 
las, chanting to his ly; e the “ Sack of 
Troy.” To divert suspicion from him¬ 
self, he began the first persecution of 
the Christians, who were charged with 
beii g the incendiaries. 

Whether the Emperor was guilty of 
the crime imputed to him will never 
be known, but he certainly was guilty 
of persecuting the followers of the 
only true religion, some of whom were 
cotemporaries of the Savior. 

The space over which the fire ex¬ 
tended is computed to have been one- 
third of Rome, or more than thirteen 
hundred acres. Thousands of persons 
perished. The city was rebuilt in 
four years. 

The greatest historical fire of mod¬ 
ern times is that of London, in 1666, in 
the reign of Charles II. It broke out 
in a bakery on the 2d of September, 
and lasted four da}^s. The number of 
houses destroyed was 13,000; and of 
churches, 89, including the Cathedral 
of St. Paul’s, a famous historical edi¬ 
fice, and many other edifices hardly 
less renowned. St. Paul’s was not re¬ 
built till more than thirty years later 
— and we believe the first sermon 
preached in the new church was that 
by Compton, Bishop of London, on the 
occasion of the thanksgiving for the 
Peace of Ryswick, at the close of 1697. 

The London fire came the year after 
what is known as the Great Plague, of 
which one hundred thousand persons 
died; and as the plague has never since 
raged in London, the fire of 1666 has 
had the credit of having extirpated it 
by destroying the unhealthy buildings 
in which it was nursed and from 
which it spread. 

There is something that borders on 
the ludicrous in the fact that the fire 


began at Pudding Lane and ended at 
Pie Corner. 

Moscow is a city renowned for fires. 
It was burned three times in the six¬ 
teenth century, — the last fire occur¬ 
ring in 1571, or over three hundred 
years ago. A fourth great fire occurred 
there in the early part of the seven¬ 
teenth century. 

The greatest of Moscow’s fires, how¬ 
ever, was that of 1812, just after the 
French entered it in September, a few 
days subsequent to their great victory 
of Borodino. The city was fired im¬ 
mediately on the arrival of the inva¬ 
ders, and in a few days it became a 
mass of ruins. 

The effect of this was to compel the 
French to leave, and to begin that 
retreat in which their army perished. 
The Russians have had great credit for 
destroying their city, yet it is by no 
means certain that they were the in¬ 
cendiaries. Strange though it may 
seem, it has never been settled whether 
the city was fired accidentally or pur¬ 
posely, by the French or the Russians. 
The Emperor Alexander was very 
angry with Count Rostophin, who was. 
disposed to claim credit for the deed. 

Constantinople has been considered 
the most inflammable city in the world, 
and it would require pages to give 
only the dates of her great conflagra¬ 
tions. The last of these fires was no 
longer ago than June, 1870. It was 
the greatest that had been known 
since that of Moscow, and it was said 
that the property destroyed was of 
the value of six hundred millions of 
dollars — doubtless a great exaggera¬ 
tion. Thousands perished in the 
flames. 

New York was long held to be Con¬ 
stantinople’s rival in fires. When the 
British took possession of the place, in 
1776, it was nearly destroyed by fire, 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


417 


which the Americans were charged 
with having kindled. If the charge 
was true, they anticipated what was 
attributed to the Russians just thirty- 
six years later. 

New York’s greatest fire was that of 
December, 1835, by which property to 
the value of twenty millions of dollars 
was destroyed. 

The great Portland fire occurred 
July 4th, 1866, caused by the burning 
of fire crackers. 

Chicago’s great fire broke out Sun¬ 
day, October 8th, 1871, about half past 
nine in the evening, in a small stable 
on the west side. In less than thirty- 
six hours it swept over 2,125 acres, de¬ 
stroying most of the business portion of 
the city as well as a great deal of the 
residence portion. There were burned 
1,500 stores, 28 hotels, 60 churches, and 
about 14,800 other buildings. The 
value of the property destroyed was 
$195,000,000. 

The great fire in Boston occurred 
on Saturday, November 9th, 1872. It 
broke out at 7 P. M., and was not 
checked until the afternoon of the fol¬ 
lowing day. It burned over sixty-five 
acres of the very best part of the busi¬ 
ness portion of the city. There were 
776 buildings destroyed. The total 
estimated loss was $73,590,000. 


RAISING OSTRICHES. 

The demand for ostrich feathers as 
an ornament for the head has become 
so great in different parts of the world, 
that, in certain places in Africa and 
in the East, ostriches are domesticated, 
and raised like common poultry. The 
business is called ostrich farming. 

On these so-called farms, numbers of 
ostriches are kept solely for the growth 
of feathers for commercial purposes; 
the inclosures in which the birds are 


confined vary in size from fifteen to 
twenty acres, encircled by low stone 
walls, over which the ostriches never 
attempt to leap. A novel plan has 
been adopted near Gramastown for 
hatching eggs of these valuable birds 
artificially by means of an incubator. 
The eggs are kept to a temperature of 
of from one hundred to one hundred 
and five degrees of Fahrenheit’s ther¬ 
mometer, by the aid of an oil lamp, at 
a cost of a trifle more than a penny for 
the twenty-four hours; the natural 
period of incubation in struthious 
birds (ostriches) is about forty-nine 
days. 

Ostrich feathers are in constant de¬ 
mand, being employed for a great 
many purposes, and their value, com¬ 
mercially, varies considerably, in ac¬ 
cordance with color and quality. The 
long white feathers which are pluck¬ 
ed from the wings are esteemed the 
finest, and are worth, on the average, 
from $150 to $200 per pound, which 
usually comprises about eighty feath¬ 
ers. 

These finer white feathers are mostly 
used by the court plume-makers. The 
process of cleaning consists in careful 
washing with soap and clean water, a 
soft brush being at the same time 
employed judiciously; after the scour¬ 
ing, the feathers are well rinsed and 
shaken out to dry. Next in value fol¬ 
low the long black and grey feathers, 
and lastly the smaller ones, which 
fetch about forty shillings a pound. 

Feathers obtained from the wild 
birds are reckoned to be more valuable 
than those plucked from the farmed 
birds. The mode of hunting ostriches 
by the regular hunters has been thus 
described: The adult male bird is 
singled out of the flock of perhaps 
six or eight, at the season when the 
feathers are in the finest condition; 







418 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


that is, when the quills have not 
arrived at their full hardness of devel¬ 
opment. The plume of the feathers 
is then delicate and soft. These feath¬ 
ers are then called blood feathers, and 
are considered of the greater value. 

The hunter then follows it at a 
sharp trot, so as not thoroughly to 
alarm the bird, but follows it at per¬ 
haps ten miles or more at the same rate 
of speed, and then stops and off saddle, 
letting his horse feed and rest a little 
for about twenty minutes. The ostrich 
also stops. The hunter then mounts 
again, and follows up the bird at a fast 
gallop. The ostrich is now, however, 
stiff and tired after his previous exer¬ 
tion, and does not go along so fast, so 
that his pursuer soon runs him down, 
and knocks him on the head with a 
“sjambok,” (a thick thong of hippo¬ 
potamus or rhinoceros hide) and kills 
him at once. An ostrich in good plum¬ 
age is worth about $80, and each 
bird has from two and one-half to three 
ounces of finest white feathers. Some 
hunters will get from fifty to eighty 
birds in a season. 


EASTER EGGS. 

The custom of eating eggs at Easter 
has been traced up, not only to the the¬ 
ology of Egypt, but to the philosophy 
of the Persians, the Gauls, the Greeks, 
and the Romans, all of whom regard 
the egg as an emblem of the universe 
and the work of Diety. “Easter,” says 
Gebelin, “and New Year's have been 
marked by similar distinctions. Among 
the Romans the New Year is looked 
upon as the renewal of all things, and 
is noted for the triumph of the sun of 
nature, as Easter is with the Christians 
for the Son of Justice, the Savior of the 
world, over death by his resurrection.” 
The early Christians of Mesopotamia 


had the custom of dyeing and decorat¬ 
ing eggs at Easter. They were stained 
red in memory of the blood of Christ 
shed at his crucifixion. The Romish 
Church adopted the custom, and re¬ 
garded the eggs as the emblem of the 
resurrection, as is evidenced by the ben¬ 
ediction of Pope Paul Y. about 1610, 
which read thus: “Bless 0 Lord! we 
beseech Thee, this Thy creature of eggs, 
that it may become a wholesome suste¬ 
nance to Thy faithful servants, eating 
it in thankfulness to Thee on account 
of the resurrection of the Lord.” Thus 
the custom has come down from ages 
lost in antiquity. 

There can be little doubt that the 
use of eggs at this season of the year 
was originally symbolical of the revivi¬ 
fication of nature, the springing torth 
of life in spring. The practice is not 
confined to Christians; at the feast of 
the Passover the eggs were used by the 
Jews, and at the festival (in March) of 
the new solar year which was kept by 
Persians, they mutually presented each 
other with colored eggs. This Feast 
of Eggs from a Christian point of view 
has been considered as emblematic of 
the resurrection and of a future life. 


HISTORY OF ORGANS. 

The name Organ is derived from the 
Greek organon , which signifies an 
instrument of action, or operation by 
which some process is carried on, and 
as applied in the mechanics of music, 
covers several instruments, the princi¬ 
ples of the construction of which are 
somewhat similar. The hypothesis 
generally received as well founded is 
that the organ in its simplest state 
was a modification of the Pipes of 
Pan, or simply hollow reeds of various 
lengths, bound together and so ar¬ 
ranged as to be rapidly swept over 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


419 


by the mouth of the player, each pipe 
graduated as near as might be to some 
natural u note ” of music. As early 
as two hundred years before Christ 
it is said that Ctesibins, the Alexan¬ 
drian inventor of the clepsydra , or 
water clock, also invented an hydrau- 
licon or hydraulic organ. Upon an 
ancient monument in the Giardine 
Mattel at Rome was carved an organ, 
parts of which bore strong resemblance 
to the organ of these times. It is said 
that organs were in use in England 
in the tenth century, and that Elfey, 
Bishop of Winchester, caused one to 
be set up in his cathedral in the year 
951. They were coarsely constructed 
and of restricted capacity. The keys 
were struck with the fist, and the 
pipes were wholly of brass. The 
largest organs had only twelve or 
fifteen pipes up to as late as the twelfth 
century. An Italian inventor added 
half notes, and first introduced his 
improved organ to the Venetians. 
This was near the close of the twelfth 
century. Pedals, or foot-keys, were 
invented by a musical German me¬ 
chanic by the name of Bernhard, in 
1470. The most noted builders of 
organs may be mentioned, the Anteg- 
nati of Brescia, in the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries — later in the eight¬ 
eenth century, Serrassi of Bergamo, 
and the Venetian Callido. Reed in¬ 
struments, of which large quantities 
are sold in America, include melodeons, 
harmoniums, seraphines, and all instru¬ 
ments producing tones by free reeds 
without the use of pipes. The reed 
is a thin strip of brass, or other ma¬ 
terial, from half an inch to several 
inches iu length. It is fastened at one 
end over an aperture in a metal plate 
corresponding in size to the reed; 
a current of air is made to pass 
through the aperture causing the reed 


to vibrate and produce a musical tone. 
The size of the reed determines its 
pitch, and its shape and other condi¬ 
tions determine its quality. It is an 
American invention, for which letters 
patent were granted to Aaron Merrill 
Peasley in 1818. The original papers 
were signed by James Monroe, Presi¬ 
dent, and John Quincy Adams, Secre¬ 
tary of State. 


MATCHES. 

As a matter of curiosity it would be 
interesting to know how the first man 
who made use of fire for any purpose 
obtained it. Perhaps is was supplied 
to him by some case of spontaneous 
combustion, or from some tree set on 
fire by lightning. This, however, is 
mere conjecture, though it is evident 
that it was a long time after the use 
of fire was known before simple and 
efficient means were discovered for 
obtaining it at will. It was always 
guarded with great care when once 
obtained. The Hebrews carried it 
carefully with them from place to 
place as the North American Indians 
were in the habit of doing before the 
early settlers of this country taught 
them the use of the flint and steel. 
Various methods for obtaining fire 
were discovered, and with the increas¬ 
ing knowledge gained by the experi¬ 
ence of successive generations, these 
means have increased in simplicity and 
certainty until we have reached that 
of the modern match. Before the 
idea of using chemical mixtures for 
obtaining fire came to be practically 
applied, the chief device used was the 
flint and steel. By striking these 
together sharply a spark was elicited, 
which, being caught upon a bit of 
tinder, could be blown into a flame/ 
This method was for a long time \ he 









420 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


best in use. About the middle of the 
seventeenth century it was discovered 
that phosphorus by friction would 
ignite the end of a stick which had 
been dipped in sulphur. Phosphorus 
did not come into general use for more 
than one hundred and fifty years after 
this discovery; but during that time 
several modes of using it for that 
purpose were devised. There are many 
who remember the matches of fifty 
years ago. In 1829, an English chemist 
discovered by experiment that chlorate 
of potash would ignite by friction. 
At the suggestion of Professor Faraday, 
nitre or saltpeter was used in the place 
of chlorate of potash in order to avoid 
the explosion made by the ignition of 
this latter substance. The first patent 
in the United States for the invention 
of friction matches was granted to 
Alonzo D. Phillips, of Springfield, 
Mass., October 24,1836. The chemical 
mixture used by him consisted of glue, 
phosphorus, chalk and sulphur; since 
that time the manufacture of matches 
has greatly increased and various pat¬ 
ents have been granted for improved 
methods of manufacture. 


SHOT. 

Shot are generally made of lead 
with which arsenic has been mixed. 
The effect of the arsenic is to render 
the lead softer and more ductile instead 
of hard and brittle, so that when melt¬ 
ed and subjected to the usual process 
in shot-making it will more readily 
take the globular form. The softer 
the lead the less arsenic is required. 
When the lead is properly combined 
with the arsenic it is formed into bars 
and raised to the top of a tower to be 
melted again and transformed into 
shot. The liquid lead m passing 
tl rough the air becomes cool and hard¬ 


ens into leaden hail or shot. It is 
said that the method of shot-making 
originated with a plumber, of Bristol, 
named Watts. About the year 1782 
he dreamed that he was exposed to a 
shower of rain, that the clouds rained 
lead instead of water, and that the 
drops of lead were perfectly round. 
He was so inspired by his dream that 
he determined to try the experiment. 
He ascended the tower of a church 
and poured some melted lead into some 
water below; the plan was successful, 
and he sold his invention for a large 
sum of money. 


DYEING SEAL SKINS. 

When the skins are received which is 

in the salt, and when washed they are 

placed upon a beam somewhat like a 

tanner’s beam, removing the fat from 

the flesh-side with a beaming-knife, care 

being required that no cuts or uneven 

places are made in the pelt. The skins 

are next washed in water and placed 

upon the beam with the fur up, and the 

grease and water removed by the knife. 

The skins are then dried by moderate 

heat, being tacked out on frames to 

keep them smooth. After being fully 

dried, they are soaked in water and 

thoroughly cleansed with soap and 

water. In some cases they can be 

*/ 

unhaired without this drying-process, 
and cleansed before drying. After the 
cleansing-process they pass to the 
picker, who dries the fur by stove-heat, 
the pelt being kept moist. When the 
fur is dry he places the skin on a beam, 
and while it is warm he removes the 
main coat of hair with a dull shoe- 
knife, grasping the hair with his thumb 
and knife, the thumb being protected 
by a rubber cob. The hair must be 
pulled out, not broken. After a por¬ 
tion is removed the skin must be again 








421 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


warmed at the stove, the pelt being 
kept moist. When the outer hairs 
have been mostly removed, he uses 
a beaming knife to work out the finer 
hairs (which are shorter), and the 
remaining coarser hairs. It will be 
seen that great care must be used, as 
the skin is in that soft state that too 
much pressure of the knife would take 
the fur also; indeed, bare spots are 
made; carelessly-cured skins are some¬ 
times worthless on this account. The 
skins are next dried, afterward damp¬ 
ened on the pelt side, and shaved to 
a fine, even surface. They are then 
stretched, worked and dried; afterward 
softened in a fulling-mill, or by tread¬ 
ing them with the bare feet in a hogs¬ 
head, one head being removed and the 
cask placed nearly upright, into which 
the workman gets with a few skins 
and some fine, hardwood sawdust to 
absorb the grease while he dances upon 
them to break them into leather. If 
the skins have been shaved thin, as 
required when finished, any defective 
spots or holes must now be mended, 
the skin smoothed and pasted with 
paper on the pelt-side, or two pasted 
together to protect the pelt in dyeing. 
The usual process in the United States 
is to leave the pelt sufficiently thick 
to pi tect them without pasting. 

In dyeing, the liquid dye is put on 
with a brush, carefully covering the 
points of the standing fur. After 
lying folded, with the points touching 
each other, for some little time, the 
skins are hung up and dried. The dry 
dye is then removed, another coat 
applied, dried and removed, and so 
on until the required shade is obtained. 
One or two of these coats of dye are 
put on much heavier and pressed down 
to the roots of the fur, making what 
is called the ground. From eight 
to twelve coats are required to produce 


good color. The skins are then washed 
clean, the fur dried, the pelt moist. 
They are shaved down to the required 
thickness, dried, working them some 
while drying, then softened in a hogs¬ 
head, and sometimes run in a revolv¬ 
ing cylinder with fine sawdust to clean 
them. The English process does not 
have the washing after dyeing. 

The above is a general process, but 
sometimes they are obliged to vary for 
different skins; those from various 
parts of the world require different 
treatment, and there is quite a dif¬ 
ference in the skins from the Seal 
Islands of our country. 


FURS. 

The term fur includes the skins 
that are covered with an exceedingly 
soft and fine hair, except those which 
come under the class of wool. In the 
Northern regions, furs have always 
been highly esteemed on account of 
the warmth which they afford as arti¬ 
cles of dress. Some of the most valu¬ 
able kinds have been chiefly .used to 
ornament the robes of persons of high 
rank, of which some are still visible 
in England in the state robes of the 
king and nobility. It does not appear, 
however, that furs constituted any part 
of the distinctive dress worn by the 
patrician orders of Greece and Rome; 
and the custom of wearing fur as 
an ornament is probably derived from 
the northern parts of Asia and Europe. 

The Sable is an animal of the weasel 
family; inhabits the mountains of 
Siberia, and in the northern parts of 
Asiatic Russia it is found of the rich¬ 
est quality and darkest color. Large 
numbers of them are caught in this 
country in the territory of the Hudson 
Bay Co. The fur in summer is of 
a brownish color, which turns darker 








422 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


in winter; in the latter condition it 
is highly valued, and is an important 
article of commerce to the Russians. 
The American sable, which is in great 
favor with the English, is sold in large 
quantities by the Hudson Bay Co.; the 
fur, however, is much coarser and less 
valuable than the Russian sable, — the 
price of which varies from $20 to $100 
per skin. It may be distinguished 
from all other furs by the hairs turn¬ 
ing and lying with equal ease in either 
direction. Dyed sables generally lose 
their gloss whether the hair has taken 
the dye or not, and the hairs are twist¬ 
ed or crimped; some smoke the skins. 
To detect dyeing or smoking, rub the 
fur with a moist linen cloth, which 
will then be blackened. 

The Pine Marten is some better 
than the European, and is usually 
called Hudson Bay sable. It is an 
excellent and valuable fur, very full 
and soft; and like the Russian sable 
is much used for muffs, capes, collars, 
boas and other kinds of fancy furs. 
Its color is a lustrous brown, and 
is frequently tinted. 

The fur of the Beech or Stone Mar¬ 
ten is inferior to that of the Pine 
Marten. It is of a yellowish brown, 
and is often colored to represent the 
Pine Marten. The best specimens 
of the fur are obtained in Europe. 

The Mink is found in almost every 
part of North America, also in por¬ 
tions of Europe and Asia. The fur 
which is of a fine brown color greatly 
resembles the sable. Contrary to the 
general rule it has been very fashion¬ 
able for several years for muffs, collars, 
boas, trimmings, etc. The fur at one 
time was of very little value, bringing 
but fifty cents per skin; it is now con¬ 
sidered a staple fur, the skins being 
worth from $1.50 to $7.00 each accord¬ 
ing to color and quality. 


The American Mink is superior to 
all others; the best come from Canada 
and Maine. 

The Ermine is a native of Russia and 
Siberia, where it abounds in large 
numbers. The fur in summer is of 
a reddish brown, which, however, 
changes to a pure white in winter; 
in this condition the fur was formerly 
very highly prized for the robes of the 
royal families of Europe and for 
the official dress of persons holding 
office of dignity. It has come into 
more general use within the last 
twenty or twenty-five years. One of 
the peculiarities of the Ermine is that 
the end of its tail remains black 
during the year. 

The Seal is a native of the oceans 
of both the cold and the warmer re¬ 
gions, and is extensively caught off the 
coast of Labrador, Newfoundland, 
Alaska and the South Sea Islands. 
The fur has a beautiful down, which 
is covered with long, smooth and shin¬ 
ing hairs; it is of different colors, from 
a brownish grey to a black, and some¬ 
times variously spotted; it is usually 
dyed a fine deep brown. The best 
coloring and dressing is done in 
London; the success in producing fine 
coloring is probably due to the atmos¬ 
phere, for the reason that although the 
identical workmen using the same 
chemicals and coloring matter in this 
country, fail to produce the same 
results: that is the same color that will 
remain for any length of time. 

The finest Seal-skins are those of 
the South Sea Islands; the prices 
range from $15 to $75 per skin accord¬ 
ing to quality. 

The Otter is found in almost the 
whole of North America; the fur 
is beautiful and of a fine dark color. 
It is exported in large quantities, and 
especially esteemed in Russia, where 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


423 


it is worn almost universally. The 
fur greatly resembles that of the 
Beaver, only much finer. They are 
fierce, wild and shy in their habits, 
live much in water and feed upon fish. 
The fur is used mostly for caps, collars 
and gloves. 

The Beaver is a native of British 
America, and to some extent of the 
northern districts of Europe. There 
are comparatively few caught in our 
latitude. Its fur is soft and close, and 
is of great value in the manufacture 
of caps and gloves, and large quantities 
are used in the manufacture of fine 
hats, both in the natural and dyed state. 
A superior variety comes from the 
coast of Labrador. 

The Squirrel is widely distributed 
over the world and is very abundant 
in North America and Northern Asia ; 
the small animal furnishes an enor¬ 
mous amount of fur, millions of squir¬ 
rels being annually destroyed in Russia 
alone. The color is usually a fine grey, 
from the lightest to the very darkest 
shade. The fur which is most highly 
prized is that of the Siberian squirrel, 
and the fur as a general rule is softest 
in the varieties farthest north. The 
tails form a very common material for 
boas. 

The Chinchilla is a native of South 
America, and is principally found 
in Peru and Chili. The fur is exceed¬ 
ingly soft and delicate, and of a beauti¬ 
ful silvery grey color. It is about the 
size of a squirrel; is extremely gentle 
and docile, and may be easily tamed 
and kept in the house. 

The Grebe is a marine bird, and 
is common in the northern parts 
of both continents. It has a strait 
sharp beak, flattened toes, and very 
short wings. The legs are attached 
so far back that the birds when on 
land assume an erect position like 


penguins. They swim very rapidly. 
There are several species; the great 
Crested Grebe is rare even in winter, 
when the number is increased from 
the north. It is sometimes called Satin 
Grebe from the beautiful shining 
silvery feathers of the lower parts 
of its body, on account of which it is 
in great request; the skin being used 
to make muffs and collars and cut into 
strips for trimmings. The plumage 
varies at different ages and seasons. 

The Fox is a native of North 
America, Asia and other countries. 
They are of all colors — white, grey, 
blue, iron grey, silver grey, red, varie¬ 
gated, and black; of these the last is the 
most valuable. The blue fox-skins are 
sought for, owing to their scarcity, 
and the black bring a high price 
from their justly acknowledged beauty. 
The silver fox is a rare animal, a native 
of the woody country below the falls of 
the Columbia River in North America. 
It has a long, deep lead-colored fur, 
intermingled with long hairs, invari¬ 
ably white at the top, forming bright 
lustrous silver grey; by some it is con¬ 
sidered more beautiful than any other 
kind of fox; the skins vary in price 
from $15 to $50. 

Nutria fur is obtained from an 
animal that inhabits South America. 
It resembles the Beaver in size and 
habits; in the workshops it is called 
the South American Monkey. It has 
long ruddy hair and a short brownish, 
ash-colored fur of considerable value, 
which has been largely exported to 
Europe for making hats. There are 
large quantities of it used in this 
country in the manufacture of hats and 
other purposes. 

The Muskrat or Musquash is a native 
of North America. It is smaller than 
the Beaver, but in appearance and 
habits much the same. The number 






424 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


of skins taken are enormous. They are 
mostly used in the manufacture of 
ladies furs. They are frequently dyed 
to imitate Mink, and are then called 
Alaska Mink; they are also plucked 
and dyed to imitate Mink, Seal and 
similar furs. 

There is an insignificant animal 
called the Skunk, the skins of which 
have become very popular made 
up into ladies’ furs and sold under the 
name of Black Marten; quantities are 
made into trimmings of various widths 
and sold to the ladies, which are used 
for trimming cloaks, sacks, jackets, 
etc. It is really very nice and fashion¬ 
able, particularly when sold under 
some fancy name. The skins with the 
least amount of white command the 
highest price. 

The Fitch or Polecat skins are pro¬ 
duced throughout Europe; the ground 
of the fur is a rich yellow, while the 
top hair is jet black. It is one of the 
most durable furs worn, and there 
is scarcely any other fur that retains 
its natural color and looks so bright 
and fresh as long as the Fitch. 

The principal fur markets of the 
world are Leipsic, St. Petersburg, 
Moscow, New York, and above all, 
London. The furs of the Hudson 
Bay Co. are sent to London where they 
are sold at auction in March and Sep¬ 
tember. The great annual fair for the 
sale of furs takes place at Leipsic, and 
is attended by purchasers from all parts 
of the world. 


HISTORY OF CARRIAGES. 

The ancient litter was a kind of 
vehicle borne by men upon shafts; 
it was much used among the Romans, 
and Pliny calls it the traveler’s cham¬ 
ber: the name lectica having probably 
been derived from lectus , a bed, there 


being usually a pillow and a quilt with¬ 
in. In the time of Tiberius these were 
in common use. The litter was also 
sometimes conveyed by horses, and the 
horse litter which was introduced into 
Rome from Bithynia, and for several 
reigns succeeding the Norman conquest 
were the only carriages employed 
in England for traveling by opulent 
persons; and this vehicle was used 
as a conveyance even long after the 
introduction of coaches as being the 
easiest, and giving the least fatigue 
of any then known. Previous to the 
invention of wheels , the sledge was 
no doubt long in use. In Madeira the 
the heavy pipes of wine are drawn 
on sledges from the mountain vine¬ 
yards to the coast, and a person accom¬ 
panies them to wet the bare rocks 
to diminish the friction. In Wales 
sledges are used to draw hay and corn. 
Wheel carriages are of great antiquity , 
being mentioned in the history of 
Joseph when among the Egyptians, 
as is shown by drawings from ancient 
representations of Egyptian chariots. 
The first wheels were probably solid 
cylinders, which would afterward be 
lightened by connecting together 
by a beam or axle, two slices cut off a 
tree, and two poles joined by cross¬ 
pieces laid upon this axle would form 
the simplest carriage. The next im¬ 
provement would be rounding the axle 
and making the solid wheels revolve 
upon it, and a frame of wood-work 
with a handle to draw it by was 
probably the first carriage. The 
antique car used by the Egyptians 
and Greeks was equally simple; the 
wheels were small but perforated 
to give them lightness; the warrior 
standing in the carriage. The con¬ 
struction of the wheels in the present 
mode of naves, spokes and felloes was 
another advance towards perfection, 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


which not only admitted of their being 
of larger size but caused them to 
be more durable by using a metal band 
all round the circumference. The 
earliest mention of covered carriages 
in modern Europe was towards the end 
of the thirteenth century. The French 
charrette was a kind of ornamented and 
covered cart. It is mentioned by 
Chaucer as having been introduced 
into England and probably it had 
no springs. Hungary is the reputed 
birth-place of the proper coach and 
according to some, received its appella¬ 
tion from Kotsee a Hungarian village 
where it was first invented. In 1294 
Philip the Fair forbade use of these 
vehicles to citizens’ wives; and in the 
reign of Edward III of England, 
although they were not uncommon, 
it was long considered as effeminate 
to ride in a coach. About the begin¬ 
ning of the sixteenth century coaches 
became extremely numerous among 
the nobility on the continent, and fre¬ 
quently consisted of a carriage having 
pillars supporting a canopy with cur¬ 
tains, to which, ultimately, glass suc¬ 
ceeded. Stowe informs us that coaches 
were not used in England till 1555, 
when the first was made for the Earl 
of Rutland ; and in 1564 one was con¬ 
structed for Queen Mary. Even in 
1550 there were only three coaches 
to be found in Paris, then a distin¬ 
guished city. The early coaches had 
no springs at all, as nearly as can 
be learned from such representation 
of them as survive. The leathern 
straps which are still used under stage¬ 
coach bodies, were the first contri¬ 
vance of the kind. They are known 
to have been in use in the time of 
Louis XIV. From these lumbering 
old machines to the assortment of 
elegant forms and combinations of 
strength and lightness, which are to 


425 

be found in the show-rooms of a first- 
class carriage maker of the present day, 
is a very long step. The good qualities 
of the present style of wheeled carria¬ 
ges are better shown in those of 
American makers than anywhere else, 
and the American vehicles are greatly 
admired abroad. Few of European 
make reach this country; when they 
do, their massive weight and clumsy 
structure present a striking contrast 
to the elastic strength, and slender 
though enduring fabric of any good 
American carriage maker. 


BRICK. 

Brick were probably used by the 
civilised nations of the east, from the 
earliest period ; the Greeks brought the 
art of construction to perfection. The 
Romans practised the art of brick- 
making with the greatest success, and 
there is not a province of the Empire 
which does not exhibit proofs of the 
durability of their work in this materi¬ 
al. The process of drying in the sun 
and burning in a kiln were employed 
by the Romans. Each were stamped 
with the mark of the maker, which 
generally consisted of the figure of 
a god or plant encircled by his name. 
Roman bricks were also scratched 
on the surface, and had lumps or notches 
cut in them for the purpose of making 
the mortar adhere more firmly than 
if they had been smooth. The first 
brick-kiln in New England of which 
there is any account was set up in 
Salem, Mass, in 1629; lime made from 
oyster shells was used before the de¬ 
posits of limestone were found; bricks 
previous to this were imported from 
England; the last which were imported 
into Boston were used for building 
chimneys. The first brick house in 
Boston is said to have been built by 












426 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


a Mr. Coddiagton; in 1643 a watch- 
house of brick was built in Plymouth, 
the bricks for it being furnished by 
a Mr. Grimes at eleven shillings per 
thousand. In New York bricks were 
early imported from Holland, and the 
style of houses was an imitation 
of those of Amsterdam. In 1630 
at the first Court of Assistants held 
in Charlestown, Mass., the wages of 
carpenters, bricklayers, sawyers and 
thatchers, were fixed at two shillings 
u day, with a penalty of ten shillings 
to both giver and taker, if more was 
paid._ 

OLIVES. 

The olive tree is interesting from 
historical recollections. It was the 
leaf of this tree, brought into the ark 
by the dove, that gave the first evi¬ 
dence of the waters of the deluge 
having abated. Since which time it 
has been employed as an emblem of 
peace. The olive was sacred to Min¬ 
erva ; it frequently appears in Grecian 
sculpture, and a wreath made of the 
leaves was a reward bestowed in the 
games of Athens. The Mount of 
Olives mentioned in Scripture proves 
it to have been a favorite tree in Pal¬ 
estine. The olive is indigenous in 
Syria, Greece and the North of Africa. 

The cultivated olive was introduced 
into Italy by the Romans. It now 
grows there in great abundance, as 
likewise in Spain and the South of 
France, but the fruit will not ripen 
in countries farther to the North. 
It will grow in England, but though an 
evergreen in warmer climates, with us it 
loses its leaves in winter, and the 
fruit does not ripen in the open air. 
The fruit is smooth and oval: about 
three quarters of an inch in length, 
and half an inch in diameter, being 
about the size of a small plum. When 


ripe, it is of a deep violet color, whit¬ 
ish and fleshy within. It is rather 
bitter, and, to many, nauseous, but 
has its pulp replete with a bland oil, 
and with an oblong, pointed, rough 
nut in the interior. In Greece, and 
also in Portugal, the fruit is eaten in 
its ripe state, but its taste is not agree¬ 
able. They are prepared for food in 
two ways: one is simply to cut and 
soak in salt and water, adding a few 
herbs to give them a flavor ; the other 
is to dry them in the sun, whereby 
they become black ; they are then put 
into jars with oil, salt and pepper, or 
other spices, adding also a few herbs. 
When eaten, they are invariably flav¬ 
ored with oil and a little vinegar. 
The Italian shepherd often takes noth¬ 
ing to the field with him but a little 
bread, a flask of wine and a horn of 
olives. Fashion has done much in 
this country to introduce and create 
an acquired taste for green pickled 
olives at dessert. They are chiefly 
taken with a view to remove the taste 
of the viands from the mouth, pre¬ 
viously to enjoying the taste of wine. 
Olives are chiefly cultivated for the oil 
which they produce. When the fruit 
is ripe it is put into a bag of rushes, 
and the oil is forced out by gentle 
pressure. The first oil is the best. 
A second quality is procured by a 
pressure sufficient to break the ker¬ 
nels. After the oil has been drawn, 
it deposits mucilage, and when suffi¬ 
ciently clear, it is put into clean flasks. 

The greatest part of our best oil 
comes from Italy and is known by 
the names of Florence, Lucca and 
Gallipoli oil. Some is brought from 
Spain and the Grecian Islands. When 
quite fresh and pure it has very little 
taste or smell, and is quite transpar¬ 
ent, having only a pale and greenish 
tint. 







427 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


COMBS. 


Combs are of great antiquity. The 
Greek and Roman combs 
were made of hard wood, usually box¬ 
wood, which was obtained from the 
shores of the Eusine ; but later on ivory 
combs came into general use amongst 
the Romans as they had long before 
been used by the Egyptians. The gold 
combs of the middle ages worn as 
ornaments, or to support the hair, were 
frequently adorned with precious stones. 
The tortoise shell afterwards became 
an important article of commerce, 
especially in India and China. Fifteen 
or sixteen pounds of shell plates can 
be taken from a single turtle; when 
they are to be made into combs, they 
are softened by boiling and then cooled 
in metal moulds to any desirable shape. 
They are also made of ivory, horn, 
wood, bone, metal and india-rubber. 
Forty or fifty years ago tortoise shell 
combs with a very high back were 
much worn; the lace like work was 
very elaborate, and some of them were 
expensive, costing thirty to fifty dollars 
a pair. 


“ OLD IRONSIDES, ” 

The frigate Constitution , “ Old Iron¬ 
sides,” as she was familiarly called, the 
most glorious and honored name on 
the list of our old navy, was built 
at Hart’s ship-yard, in Boston, where 
Constitution Wharf now is, at a cost 
of over $300,000. She was made very 
strong. Her frame was of live oak, 
and her planks were bent on without 
steam, as it was thought that that pro¬ 
cess weakened and softened the wood. 
She was launched on the 21st of Octo¬ 
ber, 1797, in the presence of a large 
gathering of people, but did not start 
upon a cruise till July, 1798, when she 


went to sea under command of Captain 
James Nicholson. The Constitution 
was so staunch a ship that she received 
the name of “ Ironsides.” She always 
had excellent commanders, and per¬ 
formed gallant service against the 
Algerine pirates and the British. 

The Constitution was the flag-ship 
of Commodore Preble in 1804, when 
Tripoli was bombarded. In the gal¬ 
lant action of the 29th of August 
in that year she was run into within 
a short distance of the castle and the 
batteries, and by her destructive fire 
of round and grape shot silenced the 
guns of the fortification and spread 
devastation among the Bashaw’s fleet. 

The next great action in whi#h the 
Constitution was engaged was the 
engagement with the British frigate 
Guerriere, of thirty-eight guns, com¬ 
manded by Captain Dacres. It took 
place on the 19th of August, 1812, off 
the American coast, in the present 
track of ships to England. The Con¬ 
stitution carried forty-four guns, and 
was commanded by Captain Isaac Hull. 
After much manceuvering to obtain 
the weather-gauge, the hostile vessels 
at six o’clock in the evening came 
within half-pistol shot of each other, 
and engaged in a deadly conflict with 
the entire force of each vessel. The 
guns of the Constitution were double 
shotted with round and grape, and their 
execution was terrible. The rigging of 
the two vessels finally became entangled, 
and both parties prepared to board. 
The fire from small arms became exceed¬ 
ingly severe, and Lieutenant Morris, 
of the Constitution , endeavored to lash 
the vessels together. At this moment 
the sails of the Constitution filled, and 
she shot ahead, instantly exposing the 
shattered condition of her antagonist. 
The foremast of the Guerriere fell, 
carrying with it her mainmast. She 













428 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


was thus left a helpless wreck upon 
a rough sea. The combat had contin¬ 
ued for an hour, and the Consti¬ 
tution was about to pour a raking fire 
into her disabled antagonist, when 
the latter discharged a gun to the lee¬ 
ward, in token of surrender. At day¬ 
light the Guerriere was found to 
be sinking. The prisoners and some 
moveables were soon transferred to the 
Constitution , and at three o’clock 
in the afternoon, the battered hulk 
having been fired, she blew up. The 
Constitution carried the intelligence 
of her own triumph to Boston. Her 
next exploit, under the command of 
Commodore Bainbridge, was the cap¬ 
ture of the Java , a British frigate of 
thirty-eight guns, commanded by Cap¬ 
tain Lambert. This engagement took 
place on the 29th of December, 1812, 
off the coast of Brazil. The action 
lasted about three hours. The Java 
was entirely dismasted, a large number 
of her guns were disabled, and her 
hull was terribly shattered, and her 
bowsprit was shot away. The Consti¬ 
tution did not lose a spar. The Java 
was one of the best ships in the British 
service. Her officers and crew num¬ 
bered over four-hundred ; twenty-two 
were killed and a hundred and two 
wounded, her commander fatally. The 
Constitution lost nine killed and 
twenty-five wounded. 

On the 20tli of February, 1814, 
while on her way from Bermuda to 
Madeira on a cruise, the Constitution , 
then under command of Captain Char¬ 
les Stewart, captured two important 
prizes, the Cyane , thirty-six guns, and 
the Levant , twenty. The action began 
about five o’clock in the afternoon. 
The evening was pleasant, the moon 
shining brightly. The British vessels 
manoeuvered so as to attack the Con¬ 
stitution simultaneously. At half-cable’s 


length they awaited their antagonist. 
She came up in gallant style, and man^ 
aged so skillfully as to pour tremen^ 
dous broadsides into both of them. 
A little before seven the Cyane surren¬ 
dered. An hour later the Constitution 
started in pursuit of the Levant , which 
was endeavoring to escape, engaged her 
a quarter to nine o’clock, and after an 
hour’s action compelled her to strike. 
The loss of the Constitution was three 
killed and twelve wounded; the two 
British vessels lost thirty-five killed 
and forty wounded. 

During the long period of peace 
which preceded the outbreak of the 
Southern rebellion the Constitution 
was used as a school-ship at Annapolis, 
Maryland, whence she was removed 
temporarily to Newport, and was there 
employed in the same service. 

The figure head of the Constitution 
was a carved wooden statue of General 
Jackson. It is now at the Philadelphia 
Navy-yard, but it is proposed to set 
it up in the Naval Academy grounds 
at Annapolis.— Harpers. 


BARBERS. 

In former times the barber’s craft 
was dignified with the title of a pro¬ 
fession, being enjoined with the art of 
surgery. The custom of cutting off 
the beard was introduced into Rome 
from the East; Plutarch says that the 
reason for shaving was that they might 
not be pulled by the beard in battle. 
In France the barber-surgeons were 
separated from the perruquiers, and 
incorporated as a distinct body in the 
reign of Louis XIY. There was a long 
strife between the barbers and sur¬ 
geons ; the former being ambitious 
to rise above their rank, and the latter 
desirous to exclude from chirurgical 
practices, persons who had not been 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


429 


regularly educated. Their superior 
talent and learning gained for the sur¬ 
geons the higher social position, but 
the barbers retained till near the 
time of the French revolution the ex¬ 
clusive privilege of using the lancet. 
The functions of the barber-surgeon 
comprised the cure of wounds, simple 
surgical operations and blood-letting, 
together with shaving and the cutting 
and dressing of hair, technically ter¬ 
med trimming. The barber shop in 
those days was a favorite resort of idle 
persons; and in addition to its attrac¬ 
tion as a focus of news, a lute, viol, 
or some such musical instrument was 
always kept for the entertainment 
of waiting customers. The barber’s 
sign consisted of a striped pole from 
which suspended a basin. The fillet 
round the pole indicated the ribbon for 
bandaging the arm in bleeding and the 
basin the vessel to receive the blood. 
The setting of fractured limbs was 
confined to a distinct class of persons 
called bone-setters. 


THE COMPOSITION AND MANUFACT¬ 
URE OF PORCELAIN TEETH. 

The principal materials entering 
into the composition of mineral teeth 
are feldspar, silex, (flint) and kaolin, 
(clay), with various fluxes, so known in 
chemistry, more familiarly characteri¬ 
zed as glasses , used to determine the 
point of fusion desired of different 
parts of the tooth. The general tone 
or tint of these materials is white or 
dusky yellow, so that coloring forms a 
prime adjunct in the process. 

The chief coloring substances are 
titanium for yellow, platina sponge 
for gray, oxide of cobalt for bright 
blue, oxide of gold for red, which is 
used to produce the best appearance of 
gum. These, with others in varying 


combinations, are used to color the 
body, point and outside enamel. To 
form some idea of the immense 
variety of shades or grades of color 
capable of being produced, you have 
only to be told that there are more 
than forty shades of color in the 
bodies used, and an equal number in 
the point and outside enamels. Thus, 
starting with the lightest shade of 
body, known as u A,” you may pro¬ 
duce forty different grades by using a 
different point enamel, and on each 
of these a different effect by the use 
of various outside enamels, so that, 
with a single body of any one color, 
you may produce 04,000 varieties or 
gradations of color, and as there are 
thirty-nine other bodies, a smart cal¬ 
culator can determine the many chang¬ 
es of which they are capable. 

It is not pretended, of course, that 
all these shades are produced, but some 
idea may be formed of the need of 
variety by the fact that out of innu¬ 
merable trials in the way of combine 
tions, one hundred and thirty standard 
shades are made, duly arranged and 
classified by members, forming a grad¬ 
ual, but quite perceptible progress, 
from the most delicate blue-white to 
the dark tobacco stain. 

Realizing what would scarcely enter 
into the thoughts of one not experi¬ 
enced,— i. e., the great diversity in color 
of the natural organs which these are 
made to imitate. We see that 
many teeth, good in themselves, have 
such an artificial appearance in the 
mouth, simply because the mechanical- 
dentist, (albeit an excellent mechanic,) 
has lacked the artistic perception to 
discover the shade and harmony of ex¬ 
pression made necessary by the com¬ 
plexion, hair and eyes of the wearer, 
faith all which Creative wisdom has 
made the natural organs to correspond. 










430 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


The feldspar (found abundantly in 
the State of Delaware) is thrown in 
large masses into a furnace, and sub¬ 
jected to a red heat, then plunged into 
water, which renders it brittle and 
easily broken by the hammer into 
small pieces, so that all foreign matters, 
such as mica or iron, with which it 
may be mixed, can be separated. It is 
then mashed into a coarse powder, 
and subsequently ground under water, 
in a mill in which heavy blocks of 
French burr stones are pushed round 
cn a nether mill-stone of same material, 
until it is an almost impalpable powder 
— so fine that it will remain suspended 
in water for a long time. The silex is 
subjected to the same process. The 
colors are long and patiently ground in 
a mortar and pestle machine, driven, as 
are the mills, by caloric engine power. 

The materials, having been dried and 
sifted, are carried to the mixing room, 
where they are properly proportioned, 
and again ground in combination into 
the various mixtures desired. At this 
stage the body assumes the consistence 
and appearance of putty; the point 
enamel of a thick batter, and the out¬ 
side and gum enamels of cream. The 
body is now ready for the molder’s 
room. But we must first see how the 
molds are made. They are of brass, 
in two or more pieces, one-half the 
tooth being represented on either side. 
Great care is necessary in the construc¬ 
tion of these molds, their cost varying 
form twenty to seventy-five dollars 
each. On them depend the shape and 
the style of the teeth. They must be 
anatomically correct, and mechanically 
perfect. It is not that Nature is intro¬ 
ducing new styles of teeth as milliners 
their novelties, but continual approxi¬ 
mation is being made to perfection, in 
imitating the endless minor differences 
in teeth, and in adapting them to new 


methods of adjustment to the plates to 
which they are to be affixed. 

The teeth are supplied, each with 
two platinum-pins which bear a well 
formed head on the outer end of the 
pin; the end imbedded in the body of 
the tooth substance is bent at right 
angles. The strength, infusibility, and 
incorruptibility of platinum renders it 
peculiarly adapted for this use. The 
pins are manufactured by a spitefully 
busy little machine which is capable 
of turning out 1,500 per minute, and 
so adjustable that pins of various sizes 
may be made to suit various sized teeth 

In each tooth matrix there are two 
minute holes, which a workman, with 
rapid tweezers, is fitting with pins of 
the proper thickness and length, which 
are to form the future fastening of the 
tooth to the plate of gold, silver, cellu¬ 
loid or rubber. The mold is then 
passed to the next workman, who takes 
up, on a small steel spatula, the requi¬ 
site amount of point enamel, and with 
this forms the cutting edge of the tooth, 
and passes the mold to his neighbor, 
who fills the matrix with body, then 
closes it. It is then passed by ma¬ 
chinery and deposited in the drying 
oven. Carefully watched, it is taken 
out at the proper moment and emptied 
of its contents, which, tender and brit¬ 
tle, are laid on clay slides, and subse¬ 
quently subjected to the process called 
biscuiting, which is done by bringing 
them to a cherry-red heat. The teeth 
are now like chalk, and can be cut and 
filed as desired. 

From the biscuiting furnace the 
teeth are carried to the assorter’s room, 
where they are arranged in sets, and 
after this the members of a set keep 
company all through their varied expe¬ 
rience. This work is done by small 
boys, whose quickness of perception 
qualifies them for the work, and who 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY 9F INFORMATION. 


431 


become so expert that they know every 
tooth, and the number of the mold 
from which it comes, as well as they 
know each other. Arranged in rows, 
they are smoothed and put in readiness 
for the enameler’s room. The enamels 
are laid on with a brush, and the work 
requires delicacy and care, being usually 
done by the careful hands of ladies. 

Having received their coats of enam¬ 
el, the teeth are carried into another 
room to receive the gum enamel, which, 
when the fire shall have passed its ver¬ 
dict upon them, will reflect the rosy 
cheeks of the artists who laid it. But, 
taking up the line of march, they are 
again halted, that other light fingers, 
the owners of which are called finish¬ 
ing trimmers, may remove any surplus 
enamel from the sides, make true, with 
fine-pointed instruments, the arch of 
the gum, and lay the teeth carefully 
on beds of quartz sand in trays of fire¬ 
clay, ready for the fiery trial through 
which they are to pass, and without 
which they are unfit for life’s work. 

Beyond this no tool can follow them. 
Imperfections heretofore could have 
been repaired, but in the future beyond 
the fire, the tooth is either perfect or a 
failure, irremediable. 

The furnace is an institution entitled 
to respect for its intensity. In its cen¬ 
tre is a muffle of fire-clay, entirely sur¬ 
rounded by the glowing fuel, a charge 
of half a ton’s weight or more, of coal, 
itself carefully bricked up before firing 
that no impurities of dust or vapor 
shall reach the teeth. Take out the 
small half oval door of the muffle, and 
you shall feel a heat the eye shrinks 
from registering, an incandescence 
that startles you by its fervor. In 
from fifteen to thirty minutes, depend¬ 
ing upon the state of the fire, the teeth, 
glowing like the oven, are taken out 
finished. The dull enamel has become 


a glass. The lusterless oxides have 
yielded their color, and the tooth that 
went in friable and brittle has come 
out adamant. But there is here re¬ 
quired a skill, the acquisition of which 
is one of the marvels of the mechanical 
arts. It is trained judgment, a skill 
of the eye and handling, that enables 
the burner to give success to the work 
of those who have gone before him, 
and at the precise point where a shade 
of failure is utter ruin. A little too 
long in that heat, and the teeth are 
ruined; while the evils of “underdone” 
are to be guarded against equally with 
the housekeeper’s baking. 

The teeth are now done and ready 
for the curious characteristic red-wax 
cards on which they go into market. 


THE INTENTION OF THE CARD-MAK- 
INGr MACHINE. 

While the card-setting machine does 
not rank among the most important 
of American discoveries and inventions, 
yet it is generally regarded as coming 
nearest in its movements to the acts of 
intelligence of any piece of mechanism 
that has ever been devised. Two deli¬ 
cate needles dart forward and punch 
the leather; a fork sweeps forward 
and sends the wire into a letter U; a 
pair of pincers seize the bent wire 
and thrust it deftly into the holes pre¬ 
pared for it; and finally a press rises 
on the opposite side of the leather, 
and bends the wire at the proper angle 
to make a perfect card. All of these 
varied movements go on automatically 
and continuously, and if a crooked or 
imperfect tooth is made, the machine 
instantly stops of its own accord. The 
card-setting machine was invented by 
Amos Whittemore, who was born at 
Cambridge, Mass., April 19th, 1759. 
His father was a farmer, but Amos 







432 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


early showed a fondness for mechanical 
pursuits, and, on arriving at the proper 
age, became an apprentice to a gun¬ 
smith. Long before the expiration of 
his apprenticeship, his master confessed 
that he could teach him no more, and 
advised him to set up business for him¬ 
self. Some years later, he became 
interested with his brother William 
and five others in the manufacture of 
cotton and wool cards, conducting 
their business in Boston, under the 
firm of Giles, Richards & Co., and sup¬ 
plying nearly all the cards then used 
in the country. Amos attended to the 
mechanical department. It soon oc¬ 
curred to him that if a machine could 
be devised to perform the operations, 
it would supersede a vast amount of 
hand labor, and would be of great 
value. After long and patient meditfr- 
tion, the plan had so far taken shape 
in his own mind, that he was ready to 
communicate his idea to his brother 
William. This brother encouraged 
and assisted him to the utmost, and a 
chamber was set apart for the construc¬ 
tion of a model. Here the enthusias¬ 
tic inventor devoted himself to the 
perfecting and embodying of his plans 
with such zeal as frequently to neglect 
his food and sleep. In the course of 
three months, the machine was so far 
advanced as to punch the leather, and 
to cut, bend and insert the wire; but 
the bending of the teeth at the proper 
angle, completely baffled his genius, 
and he began to despair of success. 
While his mind was on the stretch to 
overcome the obstacle, one night, dur¬ 
ing his sleep, the idea was presented 
to him in a dream. Rising early in the 
morning he hastened to his work-shop, 
and before he broke his fast he was 
able to announce to his brother that 
the machine was perfect. Steps were 
immediately taken to secure a natent. 


and this was obtained on the 2d 
of June, 1797. The brothers deter¬ 
mined, also, a patent should be taken 
out in England, and that the inven¬ 
tor should visit that country for the 
purpose. At that time but two 
vessels traded between Boston and 
London, and in one of these, the Min¬ 
erva, Mr. Whittemore sailed in the 
spring of 1799. He was absent a year, 
his return voyage occupying 59 days. 

On the 3d of March, 1809, the 
patent was extended by a unanimous 
vote of Congress, for 14 years from the 
expiration of the first term. In after 
years he purchased a pleasant estate in 
West Cambridge and retired from 
active business. Here, after a pure 
and blameless life, he died in 1828, at 
the age of 69 years. 


ORIGIN OF THE BAYONET. 

The Bayonet is an aj*m peculiarly 
French. It was invented, it is said, 
at Bayonne, in 1641, and employed 
in 1670 in the regiment of the 
King’s Fusiliers. It sensibly mod¬ 
ified the system of military art 
in Europe, as it made cavalry less 
redoubtable to infantry, and caused 
the fire of lines of battle to cease to 
be regarded as the principal means 
of action. 

The bayonet has, in fact, become 
the decisive arm of the combat. Ac¬ 
cording to a local tradition, it was in 
a small hamlet in the environs of 
Bayonne, that this arm was invented. 
What led to the invention of it was 
that in a fierce combat between 
some Basque peasants and some 
Spanish smugglers, the former having 
exhausted their ammunition, and be¬ 
ing thereby at a disadvantage, fast¬ 
ened their long knives to their mus¬ 
kets, and by means of the weapon 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


433 


thus formed put their enemies to 
flight. This arm rapidly came into 
general use in Europe. After the 
King’s regiment, several others were 
provided with the bayonet, and the 
dragoons received it in 1676. In 1678, 
at the time of the peace of Nime- 
guen, all the French grenadiers had 
the bayonet, but the socket which 
makes the use of it so easy was not 
invented until a later period. An 
unsuccessful experiment with the 
socket was made before Louis XIY, 
in 1688, hut the want of uniformity 
in the muskets was then an obsta¬ 
cle to the adoption of this simple 
and efficacious piece of mechanism. 
Bayonets at that time were a sort of 
dagger of which the handle was placed 
in the muzzle of the musket, and of 
course prevented the musket from 
being fired. The first battle at which 
the bayonet was seriously employed, 
was that of Turin, in 1692; but it 
was not until the battle of Spires, 
in 1703, that the first charge of the 
bayonet was executed. After that 
epoch up to 1792, the bayonet was 
often employed in combat, but the 
value of it was not revealed until 
the wars of national independence. 


THE FIRST CUT NAILS. 

By the report of the Commissioner 
of Patents for 1852 we learn that the 
first cold cut nail in the world was 
made in America. This was done in 
1777 by Jeremiah Wilkinson, of Cum¬ 
berland, Rhode Island. During the 
revolution he followed the business 
of making cards by hand, and finding 
great difficulty in obtaining a supply 
of English tacks to nail them on, he 
tried the experiment of cutting some 
with a pair of large shears from the 
plate of an old chest lock, then 


heading them on a smith’s vise. Find¬ 
ing this plan to succeed very well for 
his wants, he afterwards made all the 
tacks he wanted from sheets of iron. 
Subsequently he made larger nails, 
such as those used for fastening laths 
and shingles. This veteran inventor 
also made pins and darning needles 
of wire drawn by himself. 

He was a Quaker and followed the 
peaceable trade of fighting iron while 
others of his countrymen were fighting 
their foes. He, however, did not labor 
in vain for his country, as he laid the 
foundation for vast improvements in 
cutting nails by machinery, which is 
exclusively an American invention. 

HINGES. 

Some contrivance in the way of a 
hinge, designed to facilitate the open¬ 
ing and closing of doors, was doubtless 
among the earliest mechanical inven¬ 
tions. The most primitive of all hin¬ 
ges was probably that formed by a 
strip of leather or untanned hide, se¬ 
cured to both door and door post, a 
simple arrangement still seen in com¬ 
mon use. The correct idea of a hinge 
— a pivot or joint, upon which the 
door was supported and swung — seems 
to have originated with the Egyptians. 
They constructed doors which turned 
upon pins of wood or bronze, project¬ 
ing from the upper and lower edges 
of the doors into sockets in the lintel 
and threshold. 

The Greeks and Romans improved 
upon this formation by placing the 
upper pivot a little nearer the centre 
of the doorway than the lower one, 
thus giving the door, when opened to 
a right angle, for instance, a natural 
inclination to swing back and close 
itself. These ancient hinges were like 
the two ends of a spindle running 
through the length of the door; mod- 








434 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ern hinges resemble sections from the 
length of a spindle, not through the 
door, but between it and the door posh 
held to the one by a bolt which carries 
the pivot, and to the other by the eye 
which rides on the pivot. All the var¬ 
ious modifications of this device em¬ 
body the same fundamental elements 
— the pivot, the piece that carries it, 
and the piece that rides upon it. 

During the middle ages much pro¬ 
gress was made in the ornamentation 
of hinges by means of decorated at¬ 
tachments, worked into various grace¬ 
ful designs, but real improvements in 
the hinges themselves are of quite 
modern origin, the most valuable inno¬ 
vations in this line having been intro¬ 
duced within a very few years. 

A great many contrivances, includ¬ 
ing slopes on the flanges of the hinge, 
weights, springs, pullies, torsion rods, 
rubber bands, etc. have been brought 
forward with the design of causing 
doors to close automatically, but all 
these have given way to the combina¬ 
tion of a spiral spring with the hinge 
itself, a purely American invention, 
and one that seems destined to super¬ 
sede all other methods of securing the 
desired object. It is called the Union 
Spring Hinge, and is a combination 
of a butt hinge and a coiled composi¬ 
tion flat spring,' so arranged with 
ratchet and pawl or pin, as to operate 
at any desired pressure, or it can be 
instantly disconnected so that the door 
will move as if hung upon ordinary 
hinges. The majority of springs are 
defective for the reason that the pres¬ 
sure lessens rapidly as the door ap¬ 
proaches the closing point; in these 
the pressure is well maintained through¬ 
out. They are strong and elastic, not 
liable to break, and are not impaired 
by the action of frost or rust, as is 
apt to be the case with steel springs. 


POTHOOKS. 

In the last century, the original 
Crawshay, then a farmer's son, rode 
to London on his pony (his sole 
property) to seek his fortune. He 
began by sweeping out the ware¬ 
house of an iron-monger who was of 
a discriminating mind, and saw that 
young Crawshay had good stuff in 
him. The iron-monger had been 
speculating in sending out iron pots 
to America, and his astute appren¬ 
tice observed that if the Americans 
used so many pots thoy must want 
hooks to hang them on. Where¬ 
upon his master not only took the 
hint, but kindly determined that 
Crawshay should send them out and 
that he would lend him the money 
for the purpose. Upon this venture 
five hundred dollars was realized, 
and from that time the farmer’s son 
moved rapidly upward, being first 
taken into partnership by his mas¬ 
ter, and ultimately becoming an iron 
king in South Wales. 

COPPER. 

Copper appears to be more gener¬ 
ally distributed throughout the world 
than almost any other metal. It ri 
found in all the countries of Europe, 
in many parts of Asia, in Australia, 
the East Indies, South America, Cu¬ 
ba, Mexico and the United States. 
More than two centuries ago copper 
was mined and smelted in Massachu¬ 
setts and New Jersey, and the exist¬ 
ence of copper in the Lake Superior 
region was known at about the same 
period. The first settlers of this 
country found that many Indian 
tribes had weapons and ornaments 
made of copper, and the earliest co¬ 
lonial reports make mention of valu¬ 
able copper discoveries in Maryland, 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


435 


Virginia, North Carolina and South 
Carolina. 

In 1709, a company was formed 
to work the copper mines in Sims¬ 
bury, Conn., theirs being the first 
mining charter granted in this coun¬ 
try. The Lake Superior mines were 
first worked to a very limited degree 
in 1771, but little was known of 
their absolute extent until a geolog¬ 
ical survey of the State of Michigan 
was made about 1825. Very little 
attention was paid to the matter, 
however, until 1844, when the “ cop¬ 
per fever’’ commenced, and for four 
or five years raged with all the fury 
of an epidemic. Speculation ran 
wild and countless companies were 
formed, most of whose operations 
were confined to Wall street. The 
inevitable result followed ; the paper 
companies exploded, and thousands 
were ruined. Soon afterwards Con¬ 
gress authorized the survey and sale 
of the mineral lands in the district, 
and about 1850 several companies 
with ample capital were chartered 
and the business of copper mining 
assumed a legitimate character. 

The annual product from these 
mines is enormous and steadily in¬ 
creasing. A great deal of it is native 
metal, containing from seventy to 
eighty per cent, of pure copper, and 
occasionally some silver. It is esti¬ 
mated that the production of copper 
in the world has more than doubled 
within twenty-five years, and this in¬ 
crease is largely attributable to the 
discoveries in the Lake Superior re¬ 
gion. Notwithstanding the extent of 
our own resources, however, the Uni¬ 
ted States still import considerable 
copper ore from Cuba and Chili, pig 
and bar copper from South America, 
and sheathing copper from Great 
Britain. 


The uses of copper are almost innu¬ 
merable, its softness, tenacity and duc¬ 
tility adapting it to a great variety of 
purposes. It is rolled into sheets 
and plates, which are made into 
sheathing, boilers, stills and condens¬ 
ers for distilleries, vacuum pans for 
sugar refineries, and numerous do¬ 
mestic utensils. Copper rods are 
converted into bolts and wire, nails, 
tacks, etc. In combination with zinc 
it forms brass ; with tin and other 
alloys it constitutes bronze, gun 
metal and bell metal. Pure copper 
is no longer used for coinage, being 
superseded by a compound of copper 
and nickel. 

The process of tinning the copper 
is quite interesting. The sheets of 
metal are first washed, then im¬ 
mersed in an acid bath, to remove 
all foreign matter ; again washed 
and scoured with fine sand, when 
they are ready to receive the coat¬ 
ing of pure pig tin. The sheets are 
placed over a slow fire in brick fur¬ 
naces, the tin in small pieces is 
sprinkled on the upper side, and as 
it melts is spread over the surface 
by rubbing with a piece of cloth. 
After another washing the sheets are 
1 planished upon cylindrical burnishing 
machines, operating by steam power. 
They are finally hammered by power 
and are then ready to be converted 
into boilers or the lining of bath 
tubs. 


BEER. 

The art of making a fermented drink 
from some kind of grain, appears to 
have been known at nearly all periods 
in the world’s history, and among 
nearly all nations. Of all the cereals, 
barley is best adapted to the making 
of beer. And it is curious to notice 








436 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


how early this experimental fact was 
discovered. 

Herodotus, who wrote about 450 
years B. C., states that the Egyptians 
made their wine, as he calls it, from 
barley because they had no vines. The 
Greeks also called their beer barley- 
wine. Dioscorides describes two kinds 
of beer made from barley. Tacitus 
states that in his time, beer was the 
common drink of the Germans, as it is 
at the present day. Pliny says that 
all the nations of the west of Europe 
make an intoxicating liquor of corn 
and water. The manner of making 
this liquor is sometimes different in 
Gaul, Spain and other countries, and is 
called by many various names ; but its 
nature and properties are everywhere 
the same. Isidorus and Orosius describe 
the mode of manufacture adopted by 
the ancient Britons and other Celtic 
nations. The grain is steeped in water 
and made to germinate by which its 
spirits are excited and set at liberty ; it 
is then dried and ground, after which 
it is infused in a certain quantity of 
water, which, being fermented, becomes 
a pleasant, warming, strengthening 
and intoxicating liquor. We learn 
from Beckmann that the first notice 
of the use of hops occurs in the begin¬ 
ning of the fourteenth century, when 
it appears that they began to be regu¬ 
larly employed in the breweries of the 
Netherlands. They were introduced 
into English brewing in imitation of 
the Flemings, and were first imported 
from the Netherlands in 1524. But 
though their efficacy was admitted in 
the conservation of beer, yet they were 
long supposed to contain qualities nox¬ 
ious to the constitution, among which 
it was said that they u dried up the body 
and caused melancholy.” In the house¬ 
hold regulations of Henry VIII was 
an order to the brewer not to put any 


hops into the ale. They are first men¬ 
tioned in the English statute book, in 
1552. In 1557 the national taste had 
somewhat changed in their favor. 
Their use was general in 1600, and 
their mode of cultivation was pointed 
out by Walter Blythe in the reign of 
James I. It is evident from this, that 
the beer of the previous periods had 
been very different from what it is at 
present. Soon after the introduction 
of hops into England, so little did 
they suit the general taste, and such 
was the public opinion respecting their 
deleterious qualities, that about 1650, 
the Common Council of the City of 
London petitioned Parliament against 
two nuisances : one of which was New¬ 
castle coals and the other hops; as 
they spoiled the taste of drink and 
endangered the health of the people. 
Hops were also petitioned against in 
the reign of Henry VI, as a wicked 
weed, but the use of hops seems to 
have advanced gradually, partly from 
finding that it preserved the beer from 
turning acid, and partly from an habit¬ 
ual taste. 


THE CAMPHOR STORM GLASS. 

Dealers in philosophical and optical 
instruments sell simple storm glasses 
which are used for the purpose of indi¬ 
cating approaching storms. One of 
these consists of a glass tube about ten 
inches in length and three-fourths of 
an inch in diameter, filled with a liquid 
containing camphor, and having its 
mouth covered with a piece of bladder, 
perforated with a needle. A tall phial 
will answer the purpose nearly as well 
as a ten inch tube. The composition 
placed within the tube consists of two 
drachms of camphor, half a drachm of 
pure saltpetre, and half a drachm of 
the muriate of ammonia, pulverized 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


437 


and mixed with about two ounces of 
proof spirits. The tube is usually sus¬ 
pended by a thread near a window, and 
the functions of its contents are as fol¬ 
lows : If the atmosphere is dry and the 
weather promises to be settled, the 
solid parts of the camphor in the liquid 
contained in the tube will remain at 
the bottom, and the liquid above will 
be quite clear; but on the approach 
of a change to rain, the solid matter 
will gradually rise, and small crystal¬ 
line stars will float about in the liquid. 
On the approach of high winds, the 
solid parts of the camphor will rise in 
the form of leaves and appear near 
the surface in a state resembling fer¬ 
mentation. These indications are some¬ 
times manifested twenty-four hours 
before a storm breaks out! After 
some experience in observing the 
motions of the camphor matter in 
the tube, the magnitude of a com¬ 
ing storm may be estimated, also 
its direction, inasmuch as the parti¬ 
cles lie closer together on that side 
of the tube that is opposite to that 
from which the coming storm will 
approach. The cause of some of these 
indications is as yet unknown; but 
the leading principle is the solubility 
of camphor in alcohol, and its insolu¬ 
bility in water, combined with the 
fact that the drier the atmosphere 
the more aqueous vapor does it take 
up, and vice versa. 


HEAT OF DIFFERENT WOODS. 

The following is set down as the 
relative heating values of different 
kinds of American wood. Shell-bark 
hickory, being taken as the highest 
standard, 100; pig-nut hickory, 95; 
white oak, 84; white ash, 77; dog¬ 
wood, 75; scrub oak, 73; white hazel, 
72; apple tree, 70; red oak, 69; white 


beech, 65; black walnut, 65; black 
birch, 62; yellow oak, 60; hard maple, 
59; white elm, 58; red cedar, 56; wild 
cherry, 55; yellow pine, 54; chestnut, 
52; yellow poplar, 52; butternut, 51; 
white birch, 48; white pine, 42. Some 
woods are softer and lighter than 
others; the harder and heavier having 
their fibers more densely packed to¬ 
gether. But the same species of wood 
may vary in density, according to the 
condition of its growth. These woods 
which grow in forests or in rich, wet 
grounds, are less consolidated than such 
as stand in open fields, or grow slowly 
upon dry, barren soils. There are two 
stages in the burning of wood: in the 
first, the heat comes chiefly from flame, 
in the second, from red-hot coals. 
Soft woods are much more active in 
the first stage than hard, and hard 
woods more active in the second stage 
than soft. The soft woods bum with 
a voluminous flame and leave but lit¬ 
tle coal, while the hard woods produce 
less flame and yield a large mass of 
coal. 


PAWNBROKERS.—ORIGIN OF THE 
THREE BALLS. 


A nobleman in the town of Patara 
had three daughters, but was sunk in 
such poverty that he was not only un¬ 
able to provide them with suitable mar¬ 
riage-portions, but was on the point of 
abandoning them to a sinful course of 
life, from inability to preserve them 
otherwise from starvation. St. Nich¬ 
olas, who had inherited a large 
fortune and employed it in innu¬ 
merable acts of charity, no sooner heard 
of this unfortunate family than he re¬ 
solved to save it from the degradation 
with which it was threatened. As he 
proceeded secretly to the nobleman’s 
house, at night, debating with himself 











438 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


how he might best accomplish his ob¬ 
ject, the moon shone out from behind a 
cloud and showed him an open window 
into which he threw a purse of gold. 
This fell at the feet of the father of the 
maidens, and enabled him to portion 
his eldest daughter. A second noc¬ 
turnal visit was paid to the house by 
the Saint, and a similar present be¬ 
stowed, which procured a dowry for 
the second daughter of the nobleman. 
But the latter was now determined to 
discover his n^sterious benefactor, and 
with that view set himself to watch. 
On St. Nicholas approaching and 
preparing to throw in a purse of money 
for the third daughter, the nobleman 
caught hold of the skirt of his robe, 
and threw himself at his feet, exclaim¬ 
ing : “ 0, Nicholas ! Servant of God ! 
why seek to hide thyself” ? But 
the Saint made him promise that 
he would inform no one of this season¬ 
able act of munificence. From this in¬ 
cident in his life, is derived apparently 
the practice formerly, if not still cus¬ 
tomary in various parts of the conti¬ 
nent, of the elder members of a family, 
placing on the eve of St. Nicholas’ 
Day, little presents, such as sweetmeats 
and similar gifts, in the shoes or hose 
of their younger relatives, who, on dis¬ 
covering them in the morning, are 
supposed to attribute them to the mu¬ 
nificence of St. Nicholas. In convents 
the younger lady-boarders used, on the 
same occasion, to place silk stockings 
at the door of the apartment of the 
abbess, with a paper recommending 
themselves to Great St. Nicholas, of 
her chamber. The next morning they 
were summoned together to witness 
the results of the liberality of the 
Saint, who had bountifully filled the 
stockings with sweetmeats. 

From the same instance of munifi¬ 
cence recorded of St. Nicholas, he is 


often represented bearing three purses, 
or three gold balls ; the latter emblem 
forming the well-known pawnbrokers’ 
sign, which with considerable proba¬ 
bility, has been traced to this origin. 
It is true, indeed, that this emblem is 
proximately derived from the Lombard 
merchants, who settled in England at 
an early period, and were the first to 
open establishments for the lending of 
money. The three golden balls were 
also the sign of the Medica family 
of Florence, who, by a successful ca¬ 
reer of merchandise and money-lend¬ 
ing, raised themselves to the supreme 
power in their native State. But 
the same origin is traceable in both 
cases—the emblematic device of the 
charitable St. Nicholas. 


THE FIRST PRAYER IN CONGRESS. 

The “first prayer in Congress,” 
was made by the Rev. Jacob Duch, 
of Philadelphia : 

“ 0 Lord, our heavenly father, 
high and mighty, King of kings, 
and Lord of lords, who does from 
thy throne behold all dwellers on 
earth, and reignest with powers su¬ 
preme and uncontrolled over all 
kingdoms, empires and governments, 
look down in mercy, we beseech 
thee, on these American States who 
have fled to thee from the rod of 
the oppressor and thrown themselves 
on thy gracious protection, desiring 
to be henceforth only dependent on 
thee ; to thee have they appealed 
for the righteousness of their cause ; 
to thee do they now look for that 
support and countenance which thou 
alone canst give ; take them, there¬ 
fore, Heavenly Father, under thy 
nurturing care ; give them wisdom 
in council and valor in the field; 
defeat the malicious designs of our 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


439 


adversaries; convince them of the 
unrighteousness of their course ; and 
if they still persist in their san¬ 
guinary purposes, 0 let the voice of 
thy unerring justice, sounding in 
their hearts, constrain them to drop 
the weapons of war from their un¬ 
nerved hands in the day of battle. 

Be thou present, 0 God of wis¬ 
dom, and direct the councils of this 
honorable assembly ; enable them 
to settle things on the best and 
surest foundation, that the scene of 
blood may be speedily closed; that 
order, harmony and peace may be 
restored ; and truth, justice, religion 
prevail among the people. Preserve 
the health of their bodies and the 
vigor of their minds; shower down 
upon them and the millions they 
here represent, such temporal bless¬ 
ings as thou seest expedient for 
them in this world, and crown them 
with everlasting glory in the world 
to come. All this we ask in the 
name and merits of Jesus Christ 
thy Son and our Saviour. Amen. 


CARD-PLAYING. 


A universal Christmas custom of 
the olden time was playing at cards ; 
persons who never touched a card 
at any other season of the year, felt 
bound to play a few games at 
Christmas. The practice had even the 
sanction of the law. A prohibitory 
statute of Henry VIPs reign, forbade 
card-playing save during the Christ¬ 
mas holidays. Of course this prohi¬ 
bition extended only to persons of 
humble rank. 

Palamedes, it is said, invented the 
game of chess to assuage the pangs 
of hunger during the siege of Troy. 

Primero was the fashionable game 


at the court of England, during the 
Tudor dynasty. Shakspeare repre¬ 
sented Henry VIII playing at it with 
the Duke of Suffolk; and Falstaff 
says: I never prospered since I 
foreswore myself at Primero. Maw 
was the favorite game of James I, 
who appears to have played at cards 
just as he played with affairs of state 
in an indolent manner ; requiring in 
both cases some one to hold his 
cards, if not to prompt him what to 
play. Noddy was one of the old 
English court games, and there can 
be no doubt that the ancient Noddy 
was the modern Cribbage. Whist: 
all great inventions and discoveries 
are works of time, and Whist is no 
exception to the rule ; the wonderful 
merits of this game were not early 
recognized. Under the vulgar appel¬ 
lations of Whisk and Swobbers, it 
long lingered in the servants’ halls, 
ere it could ascend to the drawing¬ 
room. At length some gentlemen 
who met at the Crown coffee-house in 
Bedford Row, studied the game, gave 
it rules, established its principles, and 
then Edmund Hoyle, in 1743, blazoned 
forth its fame to all the world. 

Edmund Hoyle. —Of this celebrated 
writer of treatises on games of 
chance, including among others, 
whist, piquet, quadrille, and back¬ 
gammon, and whose name has be¬ 
come so familiar as to be immortal¬ 
ized in the well-known proverb: 
“ According to Hoyle little more 
is known than that he appears to 
have been born in 1672, and died in 
Cavendish Square, London, on 29th of 
August, 1769, at the advanced age of 
ninety-seven. His treatise on Whist , 
for which he received from the pub¬ 
lisher the sum of five thousand dol¬ 
lars, was first published in 1743, and 
attained such a popularity that it 








440 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ran through five editions in a year 
besides being extensively pirated. 

He has even been called the in¬ 
ventor of the game of whist, but this 
is certainly a mistake, though there 
can be no doubt that it was indebted 
to him for being first treated of, and 
introduced to the public in a scien¬ 
tific manner. 


THE OLD SHOE SALUTE. 

A writer says : Very few, probably, 
of the thousands who throw old shoes 
after bridal parties as they are leaving 
home, know anything of the origin of 
the custom. Like almost all of our 
common customs, its origin is an¬ 
cient, and can be traced to Bible times. 
It was then the custom for the brother 
of a childless man to marry his widow 
— or at least he had the refusal of 
her. If he chose to reject her, the 
ceremony was public, and consisted in 
her loosing his shoe from his foot, and 
spitting in his face. His giving up the 
shoe was a symbol of his abandoning 
all dominion over her, and her spitting 
in his face was an assertion of independ¬ 
ence. There was an affair of this 
kind between Ruth and Boaz. In some 
parts of the East it was a custom to 
carry a slipper before a newly married 
couple as a token of the bride’s sub¬ 
jection. The custom as it exists with 
us, is very old in England and Scot¬ 
land. The usual saying is that it is 
thrown for luck, and that is the idea 
in this country, but originally it means 
a renunciation of authority over the 
bride by her parents. It was former¬ 
ly a custom among the Germans for 
the bride, when she was conducted 
to her bed-chamber, to take off her 
shoe and throw it among the guests. 
Whoever got it in the struggle to 
obtain it, received it as an omen that 


either he or she would soon be hap¬ 
pily married. Train, in his history ot 
the u Isle of Man,” says : “ On the 
bridegroom leaving his house, it 
was customary to throw an old shoe 
after him, and in like manner an old 
shoe after the bride on leaving her 
home to proceed to church, in order 
to insure good luck to each respec¬ 
tively, and if by stratagem either of 
the bride’s shoes could be taken off 
by any inspector on her way from 
church, it had to be ransomed by the 
bridegroom.” In Kent, England, af¬ 
ter a couple have started on their 
tour, the single ladies are drawn up 
in one row and the bachelors in an¬ 
other. An old shoe is then thrown 
as far as possible, and the ladies run 
for it, the successful one being sup¬ 
posed to be the first female who will 
get married. She then throws the 
shoe at the gentlemen, and the one 
who is hit by it, is deemed to be the 
first male who will enter into wedlock. 
Generally, it is considered, the older 
the shoe the better. 

ANTIQUITY OF DIPHTHERIA. 

The first record we have of diph¬ 
theria was of its ravages in Rome in 
A. D. 330. It was an epidemic in 
Holland, in 1336; in Paris, in 1576; in 
Naples, in 1618; and more extensively 
in France, in 1818 and 1835. It pre¬ 
vailed as a severe epidemic in England, 
in the years 1858, ’59 and ’60. The 
American Philosophical Society (Yol. 
1) notices its first recorded appearance 
in this country in 1771, but it was not 
generally recognized then or for many 
years afterwards, being confounded 
with a membranous croup, putrid sore 
throat and other similar diseases. It 
was noticed here in the latter part of 
1856. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


441 


HOW GLASS CHIMNEYS WERE 
INVENTED. 

Argand, the inventor of the famous 
lamp which bears his name, had been 
experimenting for some time, in try¬ 
ing to increase the light, but to no 
purpose. On a table before him lay 
the broken neck of an oil flask. This 
he took up carelessly, and placed it al¬ 
most without thought over the wick. 
A brilliant flame was the result, and 
the hint was not lost on the experi¬ 
mentalist, who proceeded to put his 
discovery into practical operation at 
once. 


THE GOLD PREMIUM. 

It is said to be a historical fact that 
the depreciation of our government 
currency below par in gold first com¬ 
menced in 1862 in Columbus, Ohio, 
and not in Wall street, New York. 
There were many prominent citizens 
at that time profitably engaged in cot¬ 
ton speculation in the south. They 
found that coin answered their purpose 
much better than the government pa¬ 
per money, which the southerners were 
shy about taking. They began to pur¬ 
chase the gold that was held by the 
banks of Columbus, paying a premium 
of from three to five per cent. They 
next drew on New York for gold offer¬ 
ing about the same premium and it be¬ 
gan to excite the curiosity of the bank¬ 
ers there, and one person telegraphed 
to know why in thunder Columbus 
wanted so much gold. He was none 
the wiser when he received the reply 
to the effect that it was none of his 
business. 

In 1861 Dec. 30th and 31st Specie pay¬ 
ment was suspended. 

On Monday, January 13th 1862 gold 
was quoted in New York at 1.03. The 
highest quotation during that year was 


Dec. 4th 1.34; the lowest for the year 

1 . 01 . 

1863 the highest was Oct. 15th 1.56f; 
the lowest Aug. 25th 1.22^. 

1864 it reached the highest quotation 
during the war. Monday July 11th 
it opened at 2.76 and reached 2.85; and 
the average for that month was 2.59; 
the lowest during the year was January 
6th 1.51$. 

1865 the highest January 4th 2.33f; 
the lowest May 11th 1.28-J-. 

1866 the highest June 18th 1.67$; 
lowest March 24th 1.25. 

1867 the highest Sept. 12th 1.46f; 
the lowest January 3rd 1.32. 

1868 the highest Aug. 6th 1.50; the 
lowest Nov. 5th 1.32$. 

1869 the highest was Sept. 24 1.62$ 
which will ever be a memorable day, 
Black Friday as it was called; the low¬ 
est that day was 1.33. There were no 
quotations until the next Thursday 
and the lowest for the year was Dec. 
30th 1.19$. 

1870 the highest Jan. 10th 1.23$; the 
lowest Nov. 4th 1,10. 

1871 the highest Sept. 23rd 115$-; the 
lowest Dec. 27th 1.08$-. 

1872 the highest Aug. 8th 1.15$; the 
lowest Jan. 11th 1.08$. 

1873 the highest April 7th 1.19$; the 
lowest Nov. 8th 1.06$. 

1874 the highest April 15th 1.14$; 
the lowest July 29th 1.09. 

1875 the highest Oct. 15th 1.17$; the 
lowest July 23rd 1.11$. 

1876 the highest March 3rd 1.15; the 
lowest was in Dec. 1.07. 

1877 the highest April 17th 1.07$; 
the lowest was in Oct., Nov. and Dec., 
which times it was 1.02$. 

1878 the highest Jan. 2nd 1.02$; the 
lowest and last quotation was $ on 
Tuesday Dec. 17th. 

The greatest fluctuation in any one 
day during the 16 years was Sept. 24th 
1869; the lowest 1.33 and the highest 
1.62$. 











442 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


GUNS. 


Hand guns, or small fire arms, appear 
to have been introduced in 1471, when 
Edward IV, landing at Ravenspur in 
Yorkshire, brought with him, among 
other forces, 300 Flemings armed with 
hand guns. After this they became 
common. At first they were fired by 
the application by hand, of a lighted 
match. This was improved by the in¬ 
vention of the match-lock, a contri¬ 
vance suggested by the trigger of the 
cross-bow to convey, with certainty 
and instantaneous motion, the burn¬ 
ing match to the pan. The match¬ 
lock was superseded by the wheel- 
lock, a small apparatus for exciting 
sparks of fire by the friction of a fur¬ 
rowed wheel of steel, against a piece of 
sulphuret of iron. The fourth great im¬ 
provement was the flint-lock which con¬ 
tinued from the time of Elizabeth to the 
present century, when the inventor 
of the percussion-loch superseded all 
other forms. The introduction of per¬ 
cussion caps, led also to the necessity 
of altering the breeching of the guns. < 
The breeching or plug of a gun, 
was formerly a solid lump of iron, 
screwed into the barrel close to one 
end. Long before the introduction of 
percussion caps, it was a matter of 
complaint that these guns fired very 
slowly, and that considerable portion 
of the powder was blown out unin¬ 
flamed, so that the force was lost. A 
great improvement was made by Nock, 
in 1787, who introduced a form of 
breeching which caused the powder 
to be ignited in the centre. This 
breeching continued in use for fifty 
years without any real improvement, 
but when percussion caps came into 
use, there was a complaint that they 
did not shoot so strong; this led to 
the invention of other forms of breech¬ 


ing, many of which are now in use. 
The breech-loading system, although 
of very ancient origin, has been re¬ 
garded with much doubt in this coun¬ 
try, and even pi its modern improved 
form, great reluctance has been shown 
to generally adopt it. This slowness 
of recognition and want of confidence 
may be said to be mainly owing to the 
adverse opinions entertained regarding 
it by both sportsmen and gun-makers. 
On the Continent, matters were some¬ 
what different, and the breech-loader 
achieved for itself a good reputation. 
It was, however, but little known in 
England until the Exhibition of 1851, 
when specimens of breech-loading arms 
were submitted by French gun-makers 
but the weapons were not favorably 
received for many years after. Mr. 
Lang, the well known gun-maker, 
claims the merit of having introduced 
the new system to the notice of Brit¬ 
ish sportsmen. To Mr. Lefaucheux is 
due the honor of inventing the modern 
breech-loading sporting gun ; although 
a practically useful weapon when first 
introduced by him, the action was weak 
and imperfectly developed. But his 
great achievement was the introduction 
of a shell or cartridge case, which 
should fit the breech of the gun. The 
shell or case, by expanding at the 
moment of discharge, effectually 
closed the breech joint and prevented 
the escape of the gas. 

Conditions, such as these, had not 
been brought about before M. Lefau- 
cheux’s discovery, by the combined 
ingenuity of his predecessors. The 
happy idea of making the cartridge 
contain its own ignition, greatly con¬ 
tributed to the success of the invention. 
Lefaucheux’s first gun had but a sin¬ 
gle grip and this was about one inch 
from the hinge-pin, leaving that part 
unsecured that received the greatest 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


443 


force of the explosion, which is close 
to the breech. The result of this was 
that the breech sprang up a little every 
time the gun was discharged, and con¬ 
sequently made the barrels droop at 
the muzzle, besides causing a great 
escape of gas through the pin-hole. 
This great defect was soon seen by En¬ 
glish gun-makers, and improvements 
followed. 

The best foreign breech-loaders are 
considered to be those manufactured by 
James Purdey, William Pape, Westley 
Richards, W. W. Greener, W. E. Scott 
& Son. The leading manufacturers in 
America are Remington & Sons, Par¬ 
ker and Whitney. Their goods have 
a world-wide reputation. 

PISTOLS. 

The pistol was introduced about the 
reign of Henry VIII and was known 
as the u petronel/ 1 The name is de¬ 
rived from the city of Pistola Perugea 
in the Romagna. Many specimens of 
the ancient revolver are to be found in 
the Museum of Paris and elsewhere. 
The inefficiency of these revolvers was 
not so much owing to the fault of the 
mechanism as to the mode of ignition; 
the flint-and-steel or match lock was 
ill adapted for this kind of weapon. 

The revolver was again revived when 
percussion caps came into use. Colo¬ 
nel Colt was the first to produce a truly 
reliable revolver which was adopted 
universally by the American, and after¬ 
wards by the English Government. 

M. Lefaucheux has the credit of 
bringing out the first breech-loading 
revolver. The first specimens of the 
Lefaucheux pin cartridge case were 
made of paper with metal bases similar 
to the gun cartridges. The next im¬ 
provement was the solid metal case 
with a bullet fixed in it making it 
waterproof. 


PERCUSSION CAPS. 

Considerable doubt exists as to who 
was the inventor of percussion caps in 
their present simple and effective form. 
It appears that in the year 1807, the 
Rev. Mr. Forsyth obtained a patent 
for the use of fulminating powder in 
firing artillery. The powder employed 
by him consisted of chlorate of potash, 
sulphur and charcoal; and the apparar 
tus for using it consisted of a magazine 
turning on a roller or tube screwed 
into the breeching of the gun. A 
small portion of fulminating powder 
being deposited in the roller, the maga¬ 
zine was restored to its firing position 
and the cock struck on a pin with a 
spiral spring attached to it which in¬ 
flamed the gunpowder. This contri¬ 
vance passed through a variety of forms 
before the percussion cap was invented. 
According to Mr. Wilkinson, this 
invention was purchased by Mr. Egg 
from Mr. Roantree, a gun-maker at 
Barnard Castle, Durham, who had it 
from a workman employed by Joseph 
Shaw, an English landscape painter, 
afterwards resident in America. Mr. 
Shaw assured Mr. Wilkinson that in 
1814 he invented a steel cap which 
when fired, was retained to be primed 
again; in 1815 he invented a pewter 
cap which was thrown away after 
using; and in 1816 the copper cap 
similar to that now in use. Percussion 
caps are produced by pressure; the 
blanks are punched out of thin rolled 
copper in the form of a cross with 
short equal arms, or with only three 
arms, and the blanks having been 
annealed, are formed into caps by 
means of dies, which fold up the arms 
and unite them into a short tube, while 
the central part of the metal, which 
forms the top of the cap, sustains the 
blow of the hammer. The bottom of 
the cap is touched with a solution of 







444 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


gum or glue into which the fulminat¬ 
ing powder is dropped. Caps are some¬ 
times varnished to prevent them from 
losing their power by exposure to 
damp. _ 

LAMINATED STEEL. 

Many years ago W. Greener brought 
out the laminated steel as the very best 
and most suitable metal for gun-barrels. 

At first many gun-makers ridiculed 
the idea of using such a hard metal but 
they soon changed their opinion and 
the laminated steel has now a world¬ 
wide reputation. Laminated steel is 
made in the following manner. Hav¬ 
ing collected a sufficiency of mild steel 
scraps, such as cuttings of saws waste 
from steel pen-making old coach 
springs and the immense variety of 
pieces arising from the various manu¬ 
factures of tools; they are cut into 
pieces of equal dimensions, polished in 
a revolving drum by their friction 
against each other, until quite bright, 
and then placed for fusion on the bed 
of an air furnace. The parts first fused 
are gathered on the end of a similarly 
fabricated rod in a welding state, and 
these gather together by their adhesion 
the remainder as they become suffi¬ 
ciently heated until the bloom is com¬ 
plete. The steel is then removed from 
the furnace and undergoes the effect of 
a three-ton forge hammer and the tilt 
until it forms a large square bar; it is 
then re-heated and conveyed to the 
rolling mill where eventually it is re¬ 
duced to the size of rod desired. The 
metal is usually cut into pieces of six 
inches in length and a certain number 
are bundled together welded, and then 
drawn down again in the rolling mill. 
This can be repeated any number of 
times, elongating the fibres and multi¬ 
plying their number to an indefinite 
extent as may be required. 


There is another process of making 
laminated steel which is univsrsally 
used by gun-makers and which is called 
the modern plan. A long strip of 
mild steel of the thickness required, 
then a bar of superior iron the same 
size and another of steel and so on to 
the number of twelve, laying them 
upon each other alternately. The 
whole are then welded together and 
drawn through rolls which reduces the 
size to three or five eights of an inch 
as required and into square bars. In 
this form it is supplied to the barrel 
welder who works it up into the barrel. 
When about to be converted into 
damascus, the rod is heated the whole 
length and the two square ends put 
into the heads (one of which is a fix¬ 
ture,) of a kind of lathe which is 
worked by a handle similar to that of a 
winch. It is then twisted like a rope 
until it has from twelve to fourteen 
complete turns in the inch. By this 
severe twisting the rod of six feet is 
shortened to three, doubled in thickness 
and made perfectly round. Two of 
these rods are placed together with the 
inclinations of the twist running in 
opposite directions. They are then 
welded into one and rolled into a rod 
eleven sixteenths of an inch in breadth. 
This rod is twisted into a spiral tube 
by attaching one end to a mandrill 
which is turned round by a handle until 
the whole strip is coiled. It is usual to 
make a gun-barrel in two parts; the 
breech is made of thicker strips than the 
muzzle. Spirals that are intended for 
the breech-end are heated to a welding 
heat for about three inches, removed 
from the fire and jumped close by strik¬ 
ing the end against the anvil. Again 
they are heated and jumped to insure 
perfect welding. The neatest part of 
the process consists in joining the 
points of the two rods so as to make the 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


445 


barrel appear as if it had been twisted 
out of one rod. The ends of the two 
rods are a little detached brought from 
the fire applied to each other; a gentle 
tap is then given and the union is 
perfect in an instant. This trouble is 
only taken in the best barrels. In the 
manufacture of barrels of an inferior 
description, the ends of the rods are 
cut in a sloping direction, and when 
welded together, become quite square 
at the part where the pieces are joined. 
In a finished barrel, the points of junc¬ 
tion are easily recognized. By tracing 
the twist, a confusion will be found to 
exist for about an eighth of an inch, 
every six or seven inches. Then fol¬ 
lows hammer-hardening — that is, 
beating the barrel in a comparatively 
cold state in a groove with light ham¬ 
mers. This closes the pores, condenses 
the texture of the metal, compresses a 
greater substance into less bounds, in¬ 
creases greatly the strength of the 
barrel and renders it more elastic. 

English damascus is made much in 
the same way as the laminated steel 
just described. It contains nearly as 
much steel and is almost as hard; but 
the strips or bars of iron and steel are 
arranged so that the figure may be 
more clearly defined. The light parts 
are steel and the dark the iron. The 
curly figure is obtained by twisting the 
rods. Damascus has three rods which 
form the strip to make the barrels; 
this causes the figure to be finer. Lam¬ 
inated steel has but two rods. Bel¬ 
gian damascus barrels are used exten¬ 
sively in England by nearly all the 
gun-makers; but in this country they 
are considered inferior to the English 
make, being too soft for really good 
gun-barrels. 

Turkeys and chocolate introduced 
into England from America in 1529. 


HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PATENT 

OFFICE. 

By Act of Congress in April, 1790, 
entitled an act to promote the progress 
of useful arts, the Secretary of State 
had assigned to him the duty of receiv¬ 
ing applications for the discovery of 
any useful art or invention ; said offi¬ 
cer, with the Secretary of War and the 
Attorney General, constituting a Board 
for that purpose, who issued the “ let¬ 
ters,” which, upon examination by the 
Attorney General of the United States 
within a given period, were signed by 
the President of the United States. To 
a single clerk in the Department of 
State, then held in Philadelphia, was 
assigned the duty of filing papers and 
copying schedules of patents. The 
destruction by fire of the public 
archives in 1814, renders it difficult 
to give his name. The act of Febru¬ 
ary 21, 1803, repeals that of 1790, yet 
all patents issued under the former 
act were valid, and the labors of prep¬ 
aration of the “ letters ” were assigned 
to the Department of State, under 
charge of a clerk. In 1800, when the 
seat of government was removed to 
Washington from Philadelphia, a dis¬ 
tinguished man of genius, a fine writer 
and scholar, and a great lover of the 
fine arts, Dr.- William Thornton, was 
appointed the clerk. He was born on 
the island of Tortola, in the West 
Indies and was of American descent. 
He enjoyed the confidence of General 
Washington, and his design of the 
east front of the original capitol was 
adopted by the great chief. Dr. Thorn¬ 
ton was an intimate friend of John 
Fitch and Robert Fulton of steam 
notoriety. The doctor was wealthy 
and fond of fine horses. He was one 
of the original commissioners of the 
city, and General Washington had a 







446 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


great regard for him. The Patent 
Office was then located in a large 
three-story building, known as Blodg¬ 
ett’s Hotel, which was in a part of the 
second story, and the mail department 
filled the remainder. In the north¬ 
west room was a fine musical instru¬ 
ment of Dr. Thornton’s. The old 
Blodgett Hotel stood upon the site 
of the present south front of the Gen¬ 
eral Post Office. When the British, 
in 1814, proposed burning the build¬ 
ing, Dr. Thornton, in the most fear¬ 
less, yet gentlemanly manner, rode up 
to Admiral Cockburn and ejaculated, 
“ Is the character of the British to rival 
the Yandals in a war upon the fine 
arts by the destruction of this build¬ 
ing,” which he then first called “the 
Patent Office.” (It had been known 
as Blodgett’s Hotel.) The effect was 
electric, for while the capitol and navy- 
yard and rope walk were in flames, the 
British sailor rode off and quaffed his 
wine in Capitol Hall, at no time 
expressing any regret that Thornton’s 
toy-shop was left standing. This 
building was afterward occupied, in 
the winter of 1814-15, by both Houses 
of Congress, when the Patent Office 
writing was done at the house of the 
clerk,' George Lyon, who resided near 
by. It was re-occupied in 1816 by 
the Patent Office, Congress having 
secured accommodations in the Brick 
Capitol. George Lyon, clerk in the 
Patent Office, died in 1817, and Wil¬ 
liam Elliot was appointed first clerk 
under Dr. Thornton, known as Super¬ 
intendent. Dr. Thornton died in 1827 
and was buried in the Congressional 
Burying Ground, and he and his friend 
Elliot, mathematician and astronomer, 
lie within a few yards of each other. 
Thornton and Elliot were assisted by 
another clerk, R. W. Fenwick, and 
this constituted almost the entire force 


of the establishment. In 1828, Thos. 
P. Jones was appointed to the Superin¬ 
tendency, and he was succeeded in 
1830 by Dr. J. D. Craig, who remained 
in office till 1836. On July 4, 1836, a 
law was passed entirely remodelling 
the Office and repealing the former 
acts. The law provided for a Commis¬ 
sioner, Chief Clerk, an Examiner and 
three other clerks, one of whom must 
be a competent draughtsman and a 
machinist. On the 15th of December, 
1836, fire was discovered in the building 
occupied by the Patent Office and Post 
Office. Amos Kendall, Postmaster-Gen¬ 
eral, with some assistance was enabled 
to save records and documents from the 
Post Office, but so rapid were the 
flames, that nothing was saved from 
the Patent Office. The destruction 
of models, drawings and records, em¬ 
braced the whole history of American 
inventions for half a century. The 
first Commissioner was Henry L. Ells¬ 
worth, whose date of appointment was 
July 4, 1836. He devoted himself 
with industry and ability to the organ¬ 
ization of the Office. He remained in 
office seven years, and was succeeded 
by Edmund Burke, May 4, 1845, who 
bestowed much labor on the Office. 
Thomas Ewbank succeeded Burke, May 
19th, 1849, his reports evinced industry 
and ability. His successor was Silas 
H. Hodges, who was appointed, Nov. 
8tli, 1852, by President Fillmore. He 
remained, however, but a short time 
in office. Hon. Charles Mason, of 
Iowa, was the next Commissioner 
who was appointed, May 16th, 1853. 
He was particularly adapted to the 
position and brought to the Office 
eminent acquirements and ability. He 
graduated at the head of his class at 
West Point, and served in the army 
for a short time, since which he has 
led a legal and scientific life. He was 





447 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Judge of the Supreme Court of Iowa 
in early days; and lias devoted the 
best energies of his life to the cause 
of science. He was especially fitted 
for the duties of the Patent Office, 
and is still remembered among scien¬ 
tific men as one of the most capable 
officers, which that Department has 
ever had. He was succeeded by Hon. 
Joseph Holt, Sept. 10th, 1857, who 
was a most popular and able commis¬ 
sioner. Mr. Holt was succeeded by 
Hon. Wm. D. Bishop, of Connecticut, 
May 22, 1859, who discharged the 
duties for a brief period with ability. 
Ex-Governor Thomas, of Maryland, 
who was appointed, Feb. 16, 1860, was 
Mr. Bishop’s successor. Upon the 
election of Abraham Lincoln, Hon. 
D. P. Holloway, of Indiana, was ap¬ 
pointed commissioner, March 28th, 
1861, and held the office upwards of 
four years. Mr. Holloway was suc¬ 
ceeded by Hon. Thomas C. Theaker, 
of Ohio, Aug. 17th, 1865, who worthily 
filled the position. He was succeeded 
by Elisha Foote, of New York, who 
was appointed, July 29th, 1868, and 
he remained but a short time, and 
was succeeded by Samuel S. Fisher, 
of Ohio, April 26, 1869. The next 
appointment was M. D. Leggett, of 
Ohio, January 30th, 1871. His suc¬ 
cessor was J. M. Thatcher, of Mass., 
whose date of appointment was, Nov. 
30th, 1874. He was succeeded by the 
present incumbent, R. H. Duell, of 
New York, who was appointed, Oct. 
1st, 1875. He was succeeded by Ellis 
Spear, of Maine, whose date of ap¬ 
pointment was January 30, 1877. Hal¬ 
bert E. Paine, of Wisconsin, was next 
appointed, November 1, 1878. He was 
succeeded by Edgar M. Marble, of 
Michigan, whose date of appointment 
was March 7, 1880. Next was Ben¬ 
jamin Butterworth, of Ohio, October 


26, 1883, followed by Martin Mont¬ 
gomery, of Michigan, March 21, 1885. 
He was succeeded by Hon. Benton J. 
Hall, of Iowa, who discharged the 
duties with signal ability. Date of 
appointment April 7, 1887. Next was 
Charles Cr. Mitchell, of Connecticut. 
Date of appointment April 1, 1889. 

The first patent was issued in July, 
1790, and to 1800 averaged 91. In 1820 
it reached 200, and in 1830 it was 535. 


SHORT-HAND. 


Pythagoras is the earliest reputed 
inventor of short-hand. He lived 
about B. C. 555. Xenophon (B. C. 
424) and Ennius the Latin poet (B. C. 
239) are also said to have invented it. 
It is pretty certain that Cicero prac¬ 
ticed it, if he did not invent it, and 
that he taught it to his freedman and 
secretary, Tyro, who is said to have 
taken down in short-hand the oration 
against Catiline. These inventions, 
whether real or not, it should be 
noticed, are dated in periods of intel¬ 
lectual activity. During the Dark 
Ages short-hand slept. When the 
minds of men awoke again, it promptly 
woke with them, and a system was 
published one year before the discovery 
of America, which is said to be the 
oldest now actually extant. The chief 
mental activity of those days was 
theological; and accordingly the prac¬ 
tice of short-hand increased with Prot¬ 
estantism, and especially with that 
form of it distinguished for the boldest 
and most indefatigable mental activity, 
namely Puritanism. This religious 
belief flourished chiefly in England 
from the time of Edward VI to that of 
Charles II, and it is accordingly in 
that country and within that period, 
that the chief earlier English systems 











448 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


were invented. Bright’s appeared in 
1588, and is called the first English 
work on the subject; Bales’ in 1590; 
Willis’s in 1602, etc. The Puritans 
had among them indefatigable “ verba¬ 
tim reporters ” of sermons, and many 
of their ministers and students habit¬ 
ually used short-hand for extensive 
memoranda, notes, and even full drafts, 
of all sorts of theological composition. 
It is well known that the famous book 
of Pepys, an admirality official under 
Charles II, was left by him in short¬ 
hand and that it had to be deciphered 
and written out before printing. There 
is a curious illustration of the pedantic 
manners of these times, in the names 
chosen by different virtuosos for their 
systems. We find, besides the common 
name of stenography, the following: 
Characterie, Brackygraphy, Tachy- 
graphy, Semigraphy, Cryptography, 
Bodiography, Teiglograpliy, Polo- 
graphy, Leitography, Radiography, 
Thorography; and finally Mr. Samuel 
Soare, in 1780, soared above them all 
with the terrific double-fortified poly¬ 
syllable, Tachybrachygraphy. 

In our own older historical libraries 
are still packed up in dark corners, or 
laid under glass, as mere curiosities, con¬ 
siderable portions of the theological 
and other short-hand MSS, left by the 
colonial Puritan clergy of the seven¬ 
teenth century; and curious and valu¬ 
able historical and biographical inform¬ 
ation has more than once been extracted 
from their absolute strokes and hooks 
and curves. 

Other systems of short-hand have 
appeared every few years ever since 
those times, of which Gurney’s was 
one of the best known. It was not, 
however until the year 1837 that a sys¬ 
tem of short-hand was put forth which 
was securely founded on a true philoso¬ 
phy of language; which corresponded in 


its construction to the real elements of 
English; and which was capable of 
becoming at once a correct, systematic, 
clear and rapid record of the spoken 
words. This system was Phonog¬ 
raphy, invented by Isaac Pitman. 
After thirty-eight years of constant and 
ardent labor this has become the 
accepted system of English short-hand 
and is used in its department, almost as 
much of course as is the English 
printed alphabet in public and private. 
A considerable number of periodicals, 
manuals, and other works relating to 
it have appeared in the United States; 
for the characteristic quickness and 
thoroughly practical tendency of the 
American mind have found in Phono¬ 
graphy a most congenial study. 

Among the most important text¬ 
books of Phonography, published in 
this country, are those of Benn Pitman, 
a brother of the inventor of the system, 
who immigrated to this country from 
England, and settled in Cincinnati; 
Graham, of New York; Lindsley, of 
Mendon, Mass.; Marsh, of San Fran¬ 
cisco ; and, though the latest, the best, 
Munson, of New York. Within a 
few years, Mr. James E. Munson, of 
New York, a talented law reporter, has 
introduced some important changes 
in Phonography and has brought out 
a new text-book called “ The Complete 
Phonographer,” which is certainly the 
finest book of the kind ever published. 
In respect to the philosophic arrange¬ 
ment of principles, the working out 
of details, and mechanical execution, 
it is wholly admirable. A good text¬ 
book is of much importance to the 
learner, and a system not the best, 
might be perused with more advantage 
than a better one, if the text-books 
of a former system are very much 
superior to those explaining the latter. 
Whatever system be taken up, it would 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 449 


be well for the learner to have Mr. 
Munson’s book at hand, since it con¬ 
tains a larger and better classification 
of the words of the language than is to 
be found elsewhere. Mr. Munson’s 
method has been very favorably re¬ 
ceived, and is probably the best form 
of Phonography extant, for the use of 
short-hand reporters. At present, the 
number of reporters practicing each, 
the Pitman, the Graham and the 
Munson, the three leading styles of 
Phonography in the United States, is 
about equal. 

The business of short-hand reporting 
is generally of a permanent character, 
and quite as honorable and respectable 
as any other. Indeed a first-class 
stenographer who once establishes a 
business is pretty sure to have a 
national reputation, and to be called 
from time to time to various parts of 
the country on special occasions when 
the services of a responsible man are 
wanted. The official stenographers in 
Paris are said to hold a very good social 
position and the same thing is true in 
London, where the Parliament reporters 
are almost a part of the government, 
and in this country where more find 
employment than in any other part of 
the world. Other professions may offer 
larger and frequently more splendid 
rewards but in no other profession are 
the rewards more sure or more honestly 
earned. Other professions are infested 
by quacks and hypocrites, and shysters, 
but among short-hand writers there is 
no room for pretension and sham; only 
the skillful and competent can prosper. 

For the last ten or twelve years the 
demand for stenographic writers has 
been steadily increasing in advance of 
the supply. Many people suppose that 
most of the short-hand work is done 
for the newspapers, but this is a 
mistake. It has been principally in 


connection with the courts of law that 
stenographers have earned reputation 
and money. Judges, lawyers and 
litigants, all require their service, and 
are willing to pay liberally for it. 
Many phonographers of limited experi¬ 
ence are employed as amanuenses in 
places of public business, such as the 
custom houses, etc., in large cities, and 
in the departments at Washington. 
Many more are engaged in law, 
insurance and banking offices and as 
private secretaries. 

A few statistics may be interesting. 
The Superior, Supreme, Common Pleas, 
Marine and Surrogate’s Courts of New 
York City employ altogether fourteen 
official stenographers at salaries of $2, 
500 or 3,000 each. An act has recently 
been passed empowering the six or seven 
District Courts to supply themselves 
with like assistants, and pay a salary of 
$2,000 to each stenographer. I 11 the 
eighth Judicial District Courts of the 
State of New York, and in the Courts 
of Maine, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, 
Nebraska, Pennsylvania, California, and 
probably other States, official steno¬ 
graphers are employed. This system 
has recently been adopted in the Courts 
of South Carolina, and will no doubt 
soon be in every State in the Union. 
The certainty afforded in disputed 
points by reference to the notes of a 
competent short-hand writer, who 
takes down not what might have been 
said, but what really was said, is an 
invaluable aid to the administration of 
law and justice, aside from the great 
saving of time in the majority of trials. 
Other departments of short-hand work 
are equally well paid. Twenty-five 
cents a folio (100 words) is charged in 
New York for reporting and furnishing 
copy of testimony, or the speech of 
counsel, or any one else on an important 
matter. Five dollars is charged for 






450 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


attendance at any reference case, no 
matter how short. Not less than $10 
is paid to any first-class reporter for a 
day or night’s work, and most fre¬ 
quently $20. Dictation work, of which 
there is a large quantity done by 
younger phonographers, is paid six 
cents a folio, and the same price is paid 
for writing out from original notes. 
Prom $20 to $30 per week can easily be 
made in the busy season, at this work 
alone, by those who can write their 
notes readily, and translate them into 
legible, well-spelled long hand. Sala¬ 
ried amanuenses receive from $20 to $35 
per week, according to capacity. 

The system of short-hand reporting 
in the United States Senate, it is said, 
has become by long years of training, 
entirely uniform, so that each reporter 
can read the notes of the others with 
perfect ease. This is probably not true 
of many other bands of short-hand 
writers in the country. Every short¬ 
hand writer may he taught the same 
general system of writing, but the 
practice of his profession introduces so 
many personal peculiarities of the 
writers abbreviations known only to 
himself that it is a generally admitted 
fact that the average short-hand writer 
cannot accurately read the writing of 
any of his associates. The Senate sys¬ 
tem has for years constantly weeded 
out anything of personal peculiarity, 
and has maintained a strict adherence 
to the Pitman system, in such accuracy 
of detail that the copy of the one is 
always open print to any of the others. 
We know, however, of one other 
instance, in which several reporters of 
the Munson System transcribe each 
others notes with accuracy and ease. 

In the House there are five reporters 
who receive a salary of $5,000 a year 
for their work. They each have a 
separate system of writing and could 


no more read each others notes chan 
they could translate the hieroglyphics 
recently discovered in Arizona by the 
Hayden Expedition. They work inde¬ 
pendently of each other, turns of 
twenty minutes each, and have no 
authorized chief. 

There is the most intense rivalry 
between the staffs of the Senate and 
the House, and each is convinced that 
his side of the Capitol is the hardest to 
care for. The Senate reporters claim 
that the conversational tone employed 
in the Senate is the hardest to follow', 
while the House reporters claim that 
the noise and scenes of confusion over 
there so complicate matters that none 
but the highest order of reportorial 
talent could meet with any success. 

Charles Dickens, who was himself a 
short-hand reporter before he became a 
famous author, has given us in u David 
Copperfield,” an amusing description 
of his hero’s difficulties in mastering 
short-hand; in which description, it is 
generally believed, he had his own expe¬ 
rience in view. For the encourage¬ 
ment of young men and women who 
may desire to acquire this useful and 
beautiful art, we will say that since 
Dickens learned it, such improvements 
have been made in the art, that any 
one with average intellect and perse¬ 
verance may acquire it. 


INTERESTING FACTS. 

The first decked vessel ever built 
within the limits of the old United 
States, was constructed on the banks of 
the Hudson, by Adrian Block, in the 
summer, 1614. She was called a yacht, 
and her first voyage was made through 
Hell Gate, into the Sound, and as far 
east as Cape Cod, by the Vineyard 
passage. It was in this voyage that 
Block Island was discovered. Within 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


451 


the first 46 years after the settlement 
of Massachusetts, there were built in 
Boston and its vicinity, 730 vessels, 
varying from 6 to 250 tons in burden. 
One ol these, the Blessing of the Bay, 
a bark of 50 tons was built in 1631. 
The celebrated English patriot and 
divine, Hugh Peters, caused a vessel of 
300 tons to be constructed at Salem, 
in 1641. The first schooner ever 
launched is said to have been built at 
Cape Ann, in 1714. In 1713, Connec¬ 
ticut had but 2 brigs and 20 sloops, 
and a few smaller craft, employing but 
120 seamen: while Massachusetts, about 
the same time, had 462 vessels, the 
tonnage of which was 25,506, and 
employing 3,463 seamen. 

The first ensign ever shown by a 
regular American man-of-war, was 
hoisted on board the frigate Alfred, in 
the Delaware, by the hands of Paul 
Jones, in the latter part of December, 
1775. What this ensign was, is not 
precisely known, as the present national 
colours were not formally adopted 
until 1777. The first regular American 
cruiser that went to sea, was the 
Lexington, a little brig of fourteen 
guns, commanded by Captain John 
Barry, of Philadelphia. She sailed 
some time in the winter of 1775. The 
first American man-of-war that got to 
sea after the adoption of our present 
form of Government, was the Ganges. 
She was originally an Indiaman, but 
was purchased by the Government and 
converted into a cruiser, having an 
armament of 24 guns. She sailed in 
May, 1798, under the command of 
Captain Richard Dale, who was first 
Lieutenant of the Bon Homme 
Richard, when that ship captured the 
Serapis. The Constellation was the 
first of the new built vessels that went 
to sea, under Captain Truxton. She 
sailed ,in June, 1793, and was followed 


by the United States, and a little later, 
by the Constitution, both these latter 
sailing in July the same year. The 
first prize under our present naval 
organization, was the French Privateer 
La Croyable. She was a schooner of 
14 guns, and was captured by the 
sloop of war Delaware, Captain Deca¬ 
tur. The above historical facts we 
have gleaned from Mr. Cooper’s excel¬ 
lent Naval History of the United 
States. 


IMITATION GROUND GLASS. 

To make imitation ground glass 
that steam will not destroy, put a piece 
of putty in muslin, twist the fabric 
tight and tie it into the shape of a 
pad; well clean the glass first, and 
then pat it all over. The putty will 
exude sufficiently through the muslin 
to render the stain opaque. Let it dry 
hard, and then varnish. If a pattern 
is required, cut it out in paper as a 
stencil, place it so as not to slip, and 
proceed as above, removing the stencil 
when finished, If there should be any 
objection to the existence of the clear 
spaces, cover with slightly opaque 
varnish. 


GLASS SPINNING. 

A recent number of Journal of Ap¬ 
plied Science gives an account of some 
modern improvements in the art of 
spinning glass. Brunfaut, a Viennese 
manufacturer, to whose perseverance 
and ingenuity we are indebted for the 
brilliant results here detailed, spins a 
thread of glass surpassing in fineness 
that spun by the silkworm, and almost 
as soft and elastic. He makes glass 
flock-wool wrappings for gouty patients, 
and the same material is used for filters 
by chemists. The threads are woven into 
textile fabrics, which are made into 










452 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION- 


cushions, carpets, table cloths, shawls, 
neckties, cuffs, collars, etc. As a ma¬ 
terial for fancy dresses, for tapestry, 
for covering furniture, for laces, em¬ 
broidery and the like, the glass tissue 
will probably at some future time, 
occupy a prominent place. In softness 
it almost equals silk, and to the touch 
it is like the finest wool or cotton. It 
possesses remarkable strength, and re¬ 
mains unchanged in light or warmth, 
nor is it altered by moisture or acids. 
Spots may be removed from it by wash¬ 
ing. Being incombustible, it is special¬ 
ly valuable for ladies 1 dresses. Clothes 
of this material are at once lighter and 
warmer than those of cotton or wool. 
A veil of glass fibres excludes dust 
remarkably well. The process of man¬ 
ufacture is as yet a secret. 

STUCCO WQRK. 

The method of finishing the outside 
of buildings in stucco, still prevails to 
some extent in this country, notwith¬ 
standing that in the Northern States 
the severe frosts of winter make sad 
havoc with it, unless, as is rarely the 
case, it be of the first quality in com¬ 
position and workmanship. We are 
in receipt of inquiries from the South¬ 
ern States as to its adaptability to the 
wants of that section, and the method 
by which it is applied. 

With regard to the first point, we 
have little doubt that stucco will en¬ 
dure longer at the South than at the 
North, especially if it be of inferior 
quality. A stucco in common use is a 
compound of the grout or putty made 
of stone lime or burnt shells mixed with 
sharp grit sand. Its long exposure to 
the air has, however, a tendency to 
render it crumbly, and it is not an un¬ 
frequent occurrence to see it cleaving 
off in large scales, giving the building 
a dilapidated appearance. 


Much of this is to be attributed, as 
we have already said, to climate, but a 
great deal is to be charged to unskill¬ 
ful application and composition. The 
mortar should be most thoroughly 
beaten and worked before it is applied 
to the walls, and the strength of the 
lime should be well ascertained before 
the sand can be properly proportioned. 
Good rules for ordinary use in the mix¬ 
ing of this grout can not be given. 
Experience only can be relied upon as 
a guide for its composition. The lime 
may, however, be tested by slacking in 
the usual way. If fat, it should slack 
rapidly and swell up from two to three 
and one-half times its original bulk, 
the rapidity of the slacking, and the 
bulk after being slacked, being an in¬ 
dex of its strength or fatness. The 
fatter it is the more sand will be re¬ 
quired. 

The best sand for stucco work is 
drift sand, and it is advantageous to 
dry it on iron plates, being careful not 
to push the heat so far as to discolor it. 
The grout being mixed should be par¬ 
celed out into small portions and al¬ 
lowed to mellow for some days. It 
should then be thoroughly mixed into 
a soft putty, and spread thick upon the 
walls without any previous preparatory 
coat. It should also be thoroughly 
troweled down, as its durability de¬ 
pends very much upon the faithful¬ 
ness with which this part of the work 
is performed. Too much stress can 
scarcely be given to this point, and 
thorough work should be insisted upon. 
Another coat should be put on before 
the first is dry, and this should also be 
well worked down. It will add much 
to the durability of this stucco if a 
coat of good boiled linseed oil be laid 
on after it is dry. 

Various ingredients are recom¬ 
mended by good authority for the 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


453 


strengthening of stuccos, the basis of 
which is lime. Among these is sugar 
water in mixing, the proportions being 
about one pound of coarse sugar to 
eight gallons of water used. 

There are many other preparations 
used for stucco work, but although 
some of them are far more durable 
than the one we have described, they 
are, for the most part, too expensive to 
come into very general use. Among 
these are the well-known Adam’s oil 
cement, and the stucco made by mix¬ 
ing pulverized marble with lime or 
plaster, and working it the same as 
ordinary plaster. A good, cheap ce¬ 
ment for stucco work may, however, 
be made by using good hydraulic ce¬ 
ment and clean sand mixed in proper 
proportions and in such quantities that 
it may all be laid on before it has time 
to set. The sand should be dried and 
mixed in the proportion of one part of 
cement to two parts of sand by meas¬ 
ure. In measuring, the sand should 
not be packed, but thrown loosely in 
the measure. 

Previous to the application of any 
stucco, the joints between bricks 
should be raked out, say from three- 
eighths to one-half an inch. The sur¬ 
face should then be thoroughly swept 
to free it from loose dirt, and afterward 
wet with a hose or other convenient 
means, and the stucco applied before 
it dries. If difficulty is experienced in 
making the stucco adhere to the flat 
surface of bricks or stones, they may 
be chipped with a hatchet or mill-pick. 
The first coat should not extend so far 
that a second cannot be laid over it 
before it dries, and the whole should be 
shielded from the direct action of the 
sun’s rays while drying. 

As soon as dried the surface should 
be inspected by raps with a very light 
hammer. The non-adherent spots 


may be thus detected, and should be 
immediately torn off and replaced. 
The most important of all these pre¬ 
cautions is, however, the thoroughness 
in troweling mentioned above, without 
which any amount of pains in other 
particulars will prove vain. 


ANNEALING GLASS IN OIL. 

As is well known, very important 
characteristics are imparted to glass by 
a process of annealing in oil, by means 
of which quite a high temperature can 
be attained and kept at will. But this 
tempering in oil is not new, and no 
patent can be held except for the appli¬ 
ances by which it is done, and which 
may be different from those hitherto 
employed. 

Prince Rupert drops, with which 
Bastie glass has been compared, are 
generally tempered by being dropped 
in water; but they were also dropped 
in oil a hundred years ago; those so 
prepared presenting quite different 
characteristics from those prepared in 
the ordinary way. More than half a 
century ago the Gentleman's Magazine , 
in an article on tempering glass, gave 
the following: u If the glasses are to 
be exposed to a higher temperature 
than boiling water, boil them in oil.” 

Those who contemplate taking stock 
in the Bastie process at the high price 
at which it is held by the inventor, 
will do well, before purchasing, to 
recollect the above mentioned fact and 
to, furthermore, consult the agents and 
other processes of a similar character, 
which are now represented in New York 
or in Europe. If the papers are to be 
believed, Baur in Vienna, Pieper in 
Dresden, Stahl in Berlin, and Meuse in 
Geiersthal are busy with their processes 
of tempering glass. 

In these times of wonderful discov^ 






454 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


eries it will not do to suppose that any 
one man can take and hold every 
avenue to any coveted result. Hence 
glass makers and ste^m manufacturers 
may possess their souls in peace not¬ 
withstanding the claims of either 
Bastie or Keeler. 

A prominent Pittsburg glass manu¬ 
facturer remarked, in reference to the 
Bastie process: “This new invention 
possesses little practical importance. 
The glass trade will not be in any way 
injured by the new article. In fact it 
would seem of benefit only as applied 
to window glass, and time is required 
even to demonstrate that idea. Al¬ 
though the mode of application is 
original with M. LaBastie, the princi¬ 
ple of annealing glass in oil was in use 
at the works of Bakewell, Pears & Co., 
Pittsburg, as early as 1822. At that 
time there were no presses; all ware 
was blown, and the fancy patterns cut 
on afterwards. As some articles were 
rather heavy, and while being cut were 
frequently shattered by the vibration, 
it was desired to so anneal the ware as 
to obviate that serious difficulty. As a 
consequence the following idea was 
adopted: A large iron kettle was filled 
with ware and fish oil poured over the 
whole until all the space was occupied. 
A fire was then started under the kettle 
and kept up until the highest attaina¬ 
ble heat was secured, when the fire was 
allowed to die out and the glass cool 
gradually. In this way, the object was 
effected, and there was no more trouble 
by the breaking of ware on the cutter’s 
stone. 

OCEAN TELEGRAPH CABLES. 

Up to 1847 no substance suitable 
for the insulation of a submarine wire 
was known. In 1846, Mr. James 
Reynolds, of New York, invented a 
machine for covering wire with India 


rubber, and during the year 1847, 
covered a large amount of wire with 
this substance; but in consequence of 
drying it (vulcanization of rubber 
being then unknown,) it proved a fail¬ 
ure. Early in the spring of 1848, Mr. 
Craven brought a piece of wire covered 
with gutta percha to Mr. Reynolds, 
and asked if he could cover wire with 
gutta percha with his machine. Mr. 
Reynolds undertook to do so, and 
immediately proceeded to manufacture 
gutta percha covered wire. He covered 
the cable which was laid across the 
Hudson river between New York and 
Jersey City, which was the first gutta 
percha cable ever made, and the first 
submarine wire ever constructed and 
successfully operated for the trans¬ 
mission of intelligence over a distance 
of half a mile. The first submarine 
cable ever laid in the sea was laid 
between Dover and Calais, in 1850. It 
was a single strand of gutta percha, 
unprotected by any outside coating, 
and worked only one day. The next 
cable was also laid between Dover and 
Calais, in 1851. This contained four 
conducting wires, was 27 miles in 
length, and weighed 6 tons per mile. 
This cable is still working, after hav¬ 
ing been down 23 years. The next 
long cable was laid in 1853, between 
Dover and Ostend, a distance of 80 
miles, and contained six conducting 
wires, and weighed 5| tons per mile. 
It is still in working order. In 1853 a 
cable of one conducting wire was laid 
between England and Holland, 120 
miles, weighing If tons per mile. 
This cable worked for 12 years. From 
1853 to 1858, 37 cables were laid down, 
having a total length of 3,700 miles, of 
which 16 are still working. Thirteen 
worked for periods varying from a 
week to five years, and the remaining 
8 were total failures. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


455 


On the 6th of August, 1858, the first 
Atlantic cable was laid between Ire¬ 
land and Newfoundland. The weight 
of this cable was 1 ton per mile, and 
its cost was as follows: Price of deep 
sea wire per mile, $200; price of spun 
yarn and iron wire per mile, $265; 
price of outside tar per mile, $20; total 
cost per mile, $485. Price, as above, 
for 2,500 miles, $1,212,500; price of 25 
miles shore end at $1,450 per mile, 
$36,250; total cost, $1,249,235. This 
cable worked from August 10 to Sep¬ 
tember 1, during which time 129 
messages were sent from Valentia to 
Newfoundland, and 271 from New¬ 
foundland to Valentia. 

The next long cable which was laid 

was from Suez to India, a distance of 
3,500 miles, in 1859. This cable was 

laid in five sections, which worked 
from six to nine months each, but was 
never in working order from end to 
end. 

The total length of all the cables 
which have been laid is about 70,000 
miles, of which over 50,000 miles are 
now in successful operation. The 
20,000 miles of cables which have thus 
far failed, represent 58 in number. 

Including the original 1858 cable, 
five cables have been laid down be¬ 
tween Ireland and Newfoundland, of 
which only three are now in working 
order. These three were laid in 1866, 
1873, and 1874. The cable of 1865, of 
a similar type as the above, has not 
been working for over two years. 

The maximum speed of signaling 
through 2,000 miles of the Atlantic 
telegraph of 1858 was two and a half 
words a minute. The conductor of 
the Atlantic cable of 1858 consisted of 
a strand of seven copper wires of No. 
22^ gage, weighing 93 pounds per 
mile, while those of 1865, 1866. 1873, 
and 1874, have each 300 pounds per 


mile. The highest rate of speed 
obtained through the 1858 cable was 
2£ words per minute, while through 
the 1865, 1866,1873, and 1874 cables, 
they have obtained a speed of 17 words 
per minute in regular working, and of 
24 words per minute upon an experi¬ 
mental test. 


HOW MESSAGES ARE SENT BY THE 
OCEAN CABLE. 

He (the ocean telegraph operator) 
taps the “ key” as in a land telegraph, 
only it is a double key. It has two 
levers and knobs instead of one. The 
alphabet used is substantially like the 
Morse alphabet; that is, the different 
letters are represented by a combina¬ 
tion of dashes and dots. For instance, 
suppose you want to write the word 
“boy.” It would read like this: 

U _ ___ 

B is one dash and three dots; O, three 
dashes: and Y, one dash, one dot, and 
three dashes. Now, in the land tele¬ 
graph the dashes and the dots would 
appear on the strip of paper at the 
other end of the line, which is un¬ 
wound from a cylinder, and perforated 
by a pin at the end of the bar or 
armature. If the operator could read 
by sound, we would dispense with the 
strip of paper, and read the message by 
the u click ” of the armature as it is 
pulled down and let go by the electro¬ 
magnet. 

The cable operator, however, has 
neither of these advantages. There is 
no paper to perforate, no “ click ” of 
the armature, no armature to “click.” 
The message is read by means of a 
moving flash of light upon a polished 
scale produced by the “ deflection ” of 
a very small mirror, which is placed 
within a “mirror galvanometer,” which 
is a small brass cylinder two or three 
inches in diameter, shaped like a spool 








456 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


or bobbin, composed of several hun¬ 
dred turns of small wire wound with 
silk to keep the metal from coming in 
contact. It is wound or coiled exactly 
like a bundle of new rope, a small hole 
being left in the middle about the size 
of a common wooden pencil. In the 
center of this is suspended a very thin, 
delicate mirror about as large as a 
kernel of corn, with a correspondingly 
small magnet rigidly attached to the 
back of it. The whole weighs but a 
little more than a grain, and is sus¬ 
pended by a single fibre of silk, much 
smaller than a human hair and almost 
invisible. A narrow horizontal scale 
is placed within a darkened box two 
or three feet in front of the mirror, a 
narrow slit being cut in the center of 
the scale to allow a ray of light to 
shine upon the mirror from a lamp 
placed behind said scale, the little mir¬ 
ror in turn reflecting the light back 
upon the scale. This spot of light 
upon the scale is the index by which 
all messages are read. The angle 
through which the ray moves is double 
that traversed by the mirror itself; and 
it is, therefore, really equivalent to an 
index four or six feet in length with¬ 
out weight. 

To the casual observer there is noth¬ 
ing but a thin ray of light, darting to 
the right and left with irregular rapid¬ 
ity; but to the trained eye of the oper¬ 
ator, every flash is replete with intelli¬ 
gence. Thus the word u boy,” already 
alluded to, would be read in this way: 
One flash to the right, and three to the 
left, is B. Three flashes to the right 
is 0. One to the right, one to the left, 
and two more to the right is Y, and so 
on. Long and constant practice makes 
the operators wonderfully expert in 
their profession, and enables them to 
read from the mirror as readily and as 
accurately as from a newspaper. 


ORIGIN OF THE TERM BROTHER 
JONATHAN. 

The story of the origin of the above 
term, is as follows: 

“When General Washington, aftei 
being appointed commander of the 
army of the Revolutionary War, came 
to Massachusetts to organize it and 
make preparations for the defense of 
the country, he found a great want of 
ammunition and other means necessary 
to meet the powerful foe he had to con¬ 
tend with, and great difficulty to obtain 
them. If attacked in such condition, 
the cause at once might be hopeless. 
On one occasion, at that anxious period, 
a consultation of the officers and others 
was held, and it seemed no way could be 
devised to make such preparation as 
was necessary. His Excellency, Jona¬ 
than Trumbull, the elder, was then 
Governor of the State of Connecticut, 
on whose judgment and aid the Gen¬ 
eral placed the greatest reliance, and 
remarked, ‘We must consult Brother 
Jonathan on the subject. 1 The General 
did so, and the Governor was successful 
' in supplying many of the wants of the 
army. When difficulties afterward 
arose, and the army was spread over 
the country, it became a by-word, ‘ We 
must consult Brother Jonathan. 1 The 
term Yankee is still applied to a por¬ 
tion, but ‘Brother Jonathan 1 has now 
become a designation of the whole 
country, as John Bull has for En¬ 
gland. 11 


VALUE OF GOLD AND SILVER. 

Many people have a great desire to 
know the value of gold and silver in 
bulk. The following statement from 
Prof. J. F. L. Schirmer, Superintend¬ 
ent of the Branch Mint in Denver, 
Colorado, may be relied upon as cor¬ 
rect. The fineness of Colorado gold 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


457 


and the calculation of values on gold 
and silver are also given. It is a mat¬ 
ter of considerable value, and should 
be carefully preserved for reference. 

One ton (2,000 pounds avoirdupois) 
of gold or silver contains 29,163 troy 
ounces, and, therefore, the value of a 
ton of pure gold is $602,799.21, and of 
a ton of silver, $37,704.84. 

A cubic foot of pure gold weighs 
1,218.75 pounds avoirdupois; a cubic 
foot of pure silver weighs 656.25 
pounds avoirdupois. 

One million dollars gold coin weighs 
3,685.8 pounds avoirdupois; $1,000,000 
silver coin weighs 58,029.9 pounds 
avoirdupois. 

If there is one per cent, of gold or 
silver in one ton of ore, it contains 
291.63 ounces troy, of either of these 
metals. 

The average fineness of the Colorado 
gold is 781 in 1,000, and the natural 
alloy : gold 781; silver 209 ; copper 
10; total, 1,000. 

The calculations at the mine are 
made on the basis that 43 ounces of 
standard gold, or 900 fine (coin) is 
worth $800, and 11 ounces of silver 
900 fine (coin) is worth $12.80. 


HOW SHOE-PEGS ARE MADE. 


Shoe-pegs were invented in 1818, 
by Joseph Walker, Hopkinton, Mass. 
At least the invention is attributed to 
him, though the evidence upon which 
this opinion is based is not alto¬ 
gether satisfactory. A shoe-peg is a 
little affair, but its invention was by 
no means an unimportant event. It 
worked perhaps as great a revolution 
in a most important branch of indus¬ 
try as was ever effected by a single 
device. Before its introduction the 
soles of all boots and shoes were at¬ 


tached to the uppers by sewing ; now, 
nearly ninety per cent, of all the boots 
and shoes manufactured are pegged. 

It has given birth also to numerous 
other important inventions: pegging 
awls of improved form, rasps for cut¬ 
ting off the parts of the pegs inside 
the boot, pegging machines, which 
will peg on a sole almost before one 
can think about it, machines for cut¬ 
ting, polishing, and bleaching pegs, 
etc., etc. 

It is within the memory of the 
writer that shoe-pegs were made by 
hand. The timber from which they 
were made was sawed into blocks 
across the grain, of such a thickness 
as would, when the block was split 
into pegs, make them of the right 
length. Slabs, or bolts, thin as the 
body of the pegs wanted, were then 
split off by the use of a long, thin 
knife and a hammer; the knife being 
used like the instrument called a 
L froiv ” by coopers and shingle makers. 
The bolt or slab was next beveled on 
both sides of one edge. The slab 
thus prepared was next split into pegs 
one by one. 

Of course such a rude method as 
this was destined to be supplanted by 
a far more rapid and perfect one, and 
there is probably no article so well 
made and finished that is sold cheaper 
than the modern shoe-peg. 

It is worthy of remark that the 
same principles are applied to their 
manufacture by the best modern ma¬ 
chinery as were adopted in the hand 
method. 

The wood must be of some hard, 
close-grained variety, which splits 
easily. Hard maple and birch are the 
favorite woods for this purpose ; birch, 
however, is, we believe, the shoe-peg 
timber par excellence . 

The wood is cut into lengths of 







458 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


about eight feet, and is sold by the 
cord, at three or four times the price 
of the same kinds of timber cut into 
fire-wood. The logs are received at 
the factory in the green state, and are 
worked up as wanted. 

The first operation is peeling off 
the bark, an adze being employed for 
this purpose. The logs are next sawed 
into blocks across the grain, a little 
thicker than the length of the peg. 
These blocks are placed on a planing 
machine and the side which is in¬ 
tended for the heads of the pegs is 
planed smooth. 

The blocks are now ready to be 
grooved. This is done very rapidly 
by a machine in which a cutting tool 
reciprocates rapidly across the face of 
the block, the block being at proper 
intervals of time carried along by feed 
rollers. After the blocks have been 
grooved one way, they are again 
grooved at right angles to the first 
grooves, and both sets of grooves be¬ 
ing Y-shaped, the surfaces of the 
blocks on one side, now present a 
regular succession of quadrangular 
pyramids, which are the points of the 
yet embryo pegs. 

The next operation is splitting, 
which is doue on machines operating 
very rapidly and with great precision. 
The splitting knives on these ma¬ 
chines are pivoted at one end, and 
the other end is made to play rapidly 
up and down, the motion being simi¬ 
lar to that of a shears-blade for trim¬ 
ming sheet iron. The pivoted end 
mav be raised or lowered so that the 

1/ 

knife may only enter the wood as far 
as required, the object being not to 
split the pegs entirely apart, but to 
have them hang together at the heads. 
The blocks are fed to the splitting 
knives by fluted rollers, the flutes of 
which fit the grooves in the blocks 


made by the grooving machines. The 
blocks are fed in with the planed side 
downward, and the splitting knife at 
each stroke enters the wood at the 
bottom of the Y-shaped grooves with 
great accuracy. Thus the splitting is 
done from the points towards the 
heads of the pegs. When the block 
has passed through the splitting mar 
chine once, it is turned and fed 
through again at right angles to the 
direction in which it was first fed 
through, and after this operation the 
pegs are very nearly split apart, but 
they still hang together somewhat like 
a bunch of split lucifer matches. The 
object of keeping them thus together 
is to enable them to be fed to the 
machines in a mass. After the second 
feeding the block is forcibly thrown 
off the table of the splitting machine 
on to the floor, and the pegs fall 
asunder. The pegs at this stage are 
of different colors, somewhat rough 
on their sides, unseasoned and dusty. 
They are therefore dried in a tumbler 
heated by steam pipes, bleached with 
sulphur fumes till they assume a uni¬ 
form white color, run through a fan¬ 
ning mill to free them from dust, and 
finally packed for market. 

The extent of this manufacture is 
much greater than would seem pos¬ 
sible to most people. It would seem 
at first, that if all the people in the 
world were shoemakers, they must be 
overstocked with pegs. There are nu¬ 
merous factories in the Eastern States 
turning out from fifty to one hundred 
bushels and upward of shoe-pegs per 
day, and still the demand keeps up. 
Anything in universal demand even 
if individually the demand is small, 
must foot up large in the aggregate- 
for the civilized world. The New En¬ 
gland States manufacture the greater 
part of all the shoe-pegs used. 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


459 


CHANGES IN THE ENGLISH 
LANGUAGE. 

Following are some specimens of the 
Lord’s Prayer, as used at various periods 
in English history. 

A. D. 1158.—Fader ur in heune, 
haleweide beith thi neune, cumin thi 
kuneriche, thi wille beoth idon in 
heune and in eirhe. The curyeu dawe 
bried, gif ous thilk dawe. And vorzif 
uer detters as vi vorsifen ure dettoures. 
And lene us nought into temptation, 
bot delvvor eus of evel. Amen. 

A. D. 1300.—Fadir ure in heavene, 
Halewyd be thi name, thi kingdom 
come, thi wille be done as in heavene, 
and in erthe. Our urche days bred 
give us to daye. And forgive oure de¬ 
ters as we forgive oure dettourers. And 
lead us nought in temptation, bot 
delvvor us of evel. Amen. 

A. D. 1370.—Oure fadir that art in 
heunes hallewid be thi name, thi king¬ 
dom come to, be thi wille done in 
earthe as in heune, geve to us oure 
breed “oure other substances,” forgene 
to us ouredettis as weforgauen to oure 
detouris, lede us not into temptation, 
but delyuer us yvel. Amen. 

A. D. 1525.—0 oure fathe which 
arte in hevon, hallowed be thy name. 
Let thy kingdom come. Thy wyoll be 
fulfilled as well in earth as in hevon. 
Give us this daye oure dayly brede. 
And forgive us oure trespaces even as 
we forgive our t.respacers. And leade 
us not into temptation, but delyver us 
from evell. For thyne is the kingdome 
and the power and the gloiye forever. 
Amen. 

A. D. 1581.—Our fater which art in 
heauean sanctified be thv name. Let 
thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, 
as in heauen, in earth also. Give us 
to-day our superstantial dread. And 


forgive our detts as we forgive our det¬ 
ters. And delivere us from evil. Amen. 

A. D. 1611.—Our father which art 
in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy 
kingdom come. Thy will be done in 
earth as it is in heaven. Give us this 
day our dayley bread. And forgive 
our debts as w^e forgive our debtors. 
And lede us not into temptation, but 
deliver us from evil. For thyne is the 
kingdom, and the power, and the glory 
forever. Amen. 


THE FIRST WATER WORKS. 

The first water works in the United 
States appear to have been planned 
and constructed by Mr. J. C. Christen¬ 
sen, at Bethlehem, Pa., more than a 
century ago, namely, 1762. The ma¬ 
chinery consisted of two single-acting 
force pumps, four-inch calibre and 
eighteen inch stroke worked by a triple 
crank, and geared to the shaft of an 
under shot water wheel eighteen feet 
in diameter and two feet clear in the 
buckets. The total head of water was 
two feet. On the water wheel shaft 
was a wallower of thirty-three rounds, 
gearing into a spur wheel of fifty-two 
cogs, attached to the crank. The 
three piston rods were attached each 
to a frame or cross-head working in 
grooves, to give them a parallel 
motion with the pump. The cross¬ 
head was made of wood, as well as the 
parts containing the grooves as guides. 
The water was raised by this machin¬ 
ery to the height of seventy feet, and 
subsequently to one hundred and four¬ 
teen. The first rising main was made 
of gum wood, as far as it was subject 
to great pressure, and the rest was 
pitch pine. In 1786 leaden pipes were 
substituted. In 1813 they were 
changed for iron. These works were 
in operation as late as 1832. 







460 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


OUR PRESIDENTS. 


GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

1st President —1789 to 1797. Born 
near the Potomac river in Westmore¬ 
land county, Va., Feb. 22, 1732. 
Educated at common schools in the 
vicinity of his birth. Died at Mt. 
Vernon, Dec. 14, 1799. A farmer and 
surveyor. 

JOHN ADAMS. 

2d President—1797 to 1801. Born 
at Quincy, Mass., Oct. 19, 1735. 
Educated at Harvard College, class of 
1755. Died at Quincy, July 4tb, 1826. 
A lawyer. 

THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

3d President—1801 to 1809. Born 
at Shad well, Va., April 2, 1743. 
Educated at William and Mary 
College. Died July 4th, 1826, (same 
day as John Adams.) A lawyer. 

JAMES MADISON. 

4tli President—1809 to 1817. Born 
in King, George county, Va., March 
16th, 1751. Educated at Princeton 
College, class of 1771. Died at Mont¬ 
pelier, Va., April 28, 1836. A lawyer. 

JAMES MONROE. 

5th President—1817 to 1825. Born 
in Westmoreland county,Va., April 28, 
1758. Educated at William and Mary 
College. Died in New York city, July 
4, 1831. A lawyer. 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

6th President—1825 to 1829. Born 
at Braintree, Mass., July 11, 1767. 
Educated at Harvard College, class of 
1788. Died in Washington, D. C., 
Feb. 23, 1848. A diplomatist. 

ANDREW JACKSON. 

7th President—1829 to 1837. Born 
in Waxham Settlement, N. C., March 
16, 1767. Educated by self-applica¬ 
tion. Died at the Hermitage, near 
Nashville, Tenn., June 8, 1845. 

General. 


MARTIN VAN BUREN. 

8th President—1837 to 1841. Born 
at Kinderhook, N. Y., Dec. 5, 1782. 
Educated at the academy in his native 
town. Died at Kinderhook, N. Y., 
July 24, 1862. A lawyer. 

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. 

9th President—March 4 to April 4, 
1841. Born in Charles City county, 
Va., Feb. 9,1773. Educated at Hamp¬ 
den, Sidney College. Died at Wash¬ 
ington, D. C., April 4,1841. A general 

JOHN TYLER. 

10th President — April 4, 1841 to 
1845. Born in Charles City county, 
Va.. March 1790. Educated at William 
and Mary. Died at Richmond, Va., 
Jan. 18, 1862. A lawyer. 

JAMES K. POLK. 

11th President—1845 to 1849. Born 
in Mecklenburg county, N. C., Nov. 2, 
1799. Educated at University of North 
Carolina. Died at Nashville, Tenn., 
June 15, 1849. A lawyer. 

ZACHARY TAYLOR. 

12th President—March 4, 1849, to 
July 9,1850. Born in Orange county, 
Va., Nov. 24,1784. Education —limi¬ 
ted. Died in Washington, D. C., July 
9, 1850. A general. 

MILLARD FILLMORE.. 

13th President—July 9, 1850, to 
1853. Born in Cayuga county, N. Y., 
Jan. 7, 1800. Educated in common 
schools. Died in Moravia, N. Y., March 
8, 1874. A lawyer. 

FRANKLIN PIERCE. 

14th President—1853 to 1857. Born 
at Hillsborough, N. H., Nov. 23, 1804. 
Educated at Bowdoin College. Died in 
Concord, N. H., Oct.8, 1869. A lawyer. 

JAMES BUCHANAN. 

15th President—1857 to 1861. Born 
in Franklin county, Pa., April 22, 
1701. Educated at Dickinson College, 
1809. Died at Wheatland, Pa., June 
1, 1868. A lawyer. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


4G1 


ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

16th President— 1861 to April 15, 
1865. Born in Hardin county, Kv., 
Feb. 12, 1809. Educated by himself, 
dame nature , exclusively. Was assas¬ 
sinated at Washington, D. C., April 
15, 1865. An uncommon lawyer. 

ANDREW JOHNSON. 

17th President — April 15, 1865, to 
1869. Born at Raleigh, N. C., in 1808, 
Educated nowhere. Died at Green¬ 
ville, Tenn., Aug. 1, 1875. A tailor. 

ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 

18th President —1869 to 1877. 
Born at Point Pleasant, Clermont 
County, Ohio, April 27, 1822. Edu¬ 
cated at West Point Military Acad¬ 
emy. Died on Mount McGregor, near 
Saratoga, N. Y., July 23, 1885. 

RUTHERFORD BURCHARD HAYES. 

19th President— 1877 to 1881. Born 
in Delaware, Ohio, May 16, 1828. Ed¬ 
ucated at Kenyon College, Gambier, 
Ohio. 

JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

20th President — March 4 to Sept. 
19, 1881. Born at Orange, Cuyahoga 
county, Ohio, Nov. 19, 1831. Assas¬ 
sinated July 2, 1881. Died Sept. 19, 
1881. Educated at Hiram College, 
Portage county, Ohio. Lawyer. 

CHESTER A. ARTHUR. 

21st President — Sept. 19, 1881, 

to March 4, 1885. Born in Fairfield, 
Franklin county, Yt, Oct. 5, 1830. 
Educated at Union College, N. Y. 
A Lawyer. Died Nov. 18, 1886. 

GROYER CLEVELAND. 

22d President—March 4, 1885, to 
March 1, 1889. Born March 18, 1837, 
in Caldwell, Essex Co., N. J. Lawyer. 

BENJAMIN HARRISON. 

23d President — March 4, 1889. 

Born in North Bend, Ohio, Aug. 20, 
1833. Educated at Miami Univer¬ 
sity, Ohio. A Lawyer. 


GUM ARABIC. 

Gum Arabic is obtained from the 
Acacia Arabica or Acacia vera which 
grows upon the banks of the Nile and 
in Arabia. In July, a gummy juice 
exudes from the trunk and the princi¬ 
pal branches of the acacia tree. In 
about fifteen days it thickens in the 
furrow, down which it runs, assuming 
the form of oval and round tears about 
the size of a pigeon's egg, of different 
colors, as they belong to the white or 
red gum tree. About the middle of 
December the Moors encamp on the 
borders of the forest, and the harvest 
lasts six weeks. The gum is packed 
in very large sacks of leather, and 
brought on the backs of the bullocks 
and camels to certain ports, where it is 
sold to the French and English mer¬ 
chants. 


NEW YORK FIFTY YEARS AGO. 

Fifty years ago it took a whole day 
to go to Philadelphia, and the passage 
to Boston required tw r o days. Two 
steamboats, leaving New York every 
other day, were sufficient to carry all 
the passenger traffic between New York 
and Boston. The passage from here 
to Providence cost eight dollars, and 
from Providence to Boston the distance 
was made in stage coaches. One small 
steamboat was sufficient for all the 
Sound travel between New York and 
Hartford. Two small steamboats car¬ 
ried all the passengers between Albany 
and New York. 

The population of New York fifty 
years ago, was about 130,000 — hardly 
more than a quarter of the present 
population of Chicago, which then had 
no existence except as an Indian out¬ 
look. 

Brooklyn was a straggling village of 









462 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


seven thousand inhabitants, and there 
was but one steam ferry-boat on the 
East River. The largest ship then 
sailing from the port did not exceed 
500 tons burden. Postage on a single 
letter sheet by mail to Boston, was 
eighteen and three-quarters cents. 
There were no envelopes. Mucilage 
was unknown, and it was considered 
disrespectful not to seal a letter with 
a great lump of red wax. There were 
no omnibusses nor street railways. 
The City Hall Park was surrounded by 
a shabby wooden fence; hogs ran at 
large through all the streets and wal¬ 
lowed in the gutters. There were no 
sewers, nor gas-lights, nor Croton 
water, nor fountains, nor bath-rooms, 
nor hydropathic boarding-houses, and 
ice-carts were hardly known, and re¬ 
frigerators unheard of. Around every 
church inclosure was a burying-ground. 
Men wore moccasins to meeting in 
winter weather, and women had foot- 
stoves, containing heated bricks, to 
keep their feet from freezing. Fifty 
years ago there was not one Congrega¬ 
tional church in New York, and but 
two Catholic churches. The Jews 
found one small synagogue sufficient 
for all the descendants of Abraham 
then here. The Methodists were then 
so poor and so modest that they put 
no steeples nor belfreys upon their 
meeting-houses, and their u Book Con¬ 
cern ” was a little shop down in Fulton 
street. Fifty years ago there were no 
Hicksites, nor Mormons, nor Spiritual¬ 
ists, nor homeopaths, nor liydropaths, 
nor temperance societies, nor prohib¬ 
itionists, nor eclectics, nor chloroform, 
nor meerschaums, nor lager, nor sew¬ 
ing machines, nor ready-made clothing, 
nor anthracite coal, nor police, nor 
detectives, nor safes, nor life insurance 
companies, nor trust companies, and 
only one savings bank. There was no 


weather bureau, nor u probabilities,” 
nor paid fire department, nor steam fire 
engines. There was no Calfornia gold, 
nor Nevada silver. There was no Boss 
Tweed nor a Fernando Wood; but 
there was corruption enough in politics 
as anybody may see by reading the 
daily papers of those good old times, in 
which DeWitt Clinton was denounced 
for his enormous wickedness in plung¬ 
ing the State in debt for the purpose of 
digging a big ditch to connect Lake 
Erie with the Hudson River. 

Fifty years ago, extras were altogeth¬ 
er unknown. There was then no Sun } 
no Herald, no Tribune, no Times, no 
Journal of Commerce } no World , no 
Independent, no Evening Express , nor 
any religious paper of any kind. There 
was only one hotel of any importance 

— the City Hotel. 

There was but one rich man in New 
York, whose name was Astor. Peter 
Cooper was keeping a corner grocery 
in the Bowery; Vanderbilt was keep¬ 
ing a tavern in New Jersey, and A. T. 
Stewart had just opened a small dry 
goods store on Broadway. There was 
no Barnum, no Bourcicault, nor Wal¬ 
laces, and but one place of amusement 

— the old Park Theatre. There were 
no photographs, no illustrated papers, 
no monthly magazines, no telegrams. 


DEPTH OF AMERICAN LAKES. 

There is a mystery about the Ameri¬ 
can lakes. Lake Erie is only 60 or TO 
feet deep; but Lake Ontario, which is 
592 feet deep, is 230 feet below the tide 
level of the ocean; or as low as most 
parts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence; and 
the bottoms of Lakes Huron, Michigan, 
and Superior, although the surface is 
much higher, are all, from their vast 
depths, on a level with the bottom of 
Ontario. Now, as the discharge 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


463 


through the River Detroit, after allow¬ 
ing for the probable portion carried off 
by evaporation, does not appear by any 
means equal to the quantity of water 
which the three upper lakes receive, it 
has been conjectured that a subterra¬ 
nean river may run from Lake Superior, 
by the Huron, to Lake Ontario. This 
conjecture is not improbable, and 
accounts for the singular fact that 
salmon and herring are caught in all 
the lakes communicating with the St. 
Lawrence, but no others. As the Falls 
of Niagara must have always existed, it 
would puzzle the naturalist to say liow 
these fish got into the upper lakes 
without some subterranean river; more¬ 
over, any periodical obstruction of the 
river would furnish a not improbable 
solution of the mysterious flux and 
reflux of the lakes. 


SERVANTS THREE HUNDRED YEARS 

AGO. 

What would servants in the present 
day say to such a code of rules and 
regulations as was adopted three hun¬ 
dred years ago in the household of 
Sir J. Harrington, the translator of 
Ariosto? A servant absent from 
prayers to be fined five cents; for 
uttering an oath, three cents, and the 
same sum for leaving a door open; a 
fine of five cents from Ladyday to 
Miehealmas for all who are in bed 
after seven a. m., or out after nine 
p. m.; a fine of three cents for any 
beds unmade, fire built or candle box 
uncleaned after eight; a fine of ten 
cents for any man detected teaching 
the children obscene words; a fine of 
three cents for any man waiting with¬ 
out a trencher, or who is absent at a 
meal; for any one breaking any of 
the butler’s glass, twenty-five cents; 
a fine of five cents for any one who 


has not laid the table for dinner by 
10:30 or the supper at six; a fine of 
ten cents for any one absent a day 
without leave; for any man striking 
another, a fine of three cents; for any 
follower visiting the cook, three cents; 
a fine of three cents for any man ap¬ 
pearing in a foul shirt, broken hose, 
untied shoes, or torn doublet; a fine 
of three cents for any stranger’s room 
left for four hours after he be dressed; 
a fine of three cents if the hall be not 
cleansed by eight in winter and seven 
in summer; the porter to be fined 
three cents if the court gate be not 
shut during meals; a fine of ten cents 
if the stairs be not cleansed every 
Friday after dinner. All these fines 
were deducted by the steward at the 
quarterly payment of the men’s wages. 


UNCLE SAM. 

Immediately after the declaration of 
war with England, in 1812, Elbert 
Anderson, of New York, then a con¬ 
tractor, visited Troy, where he pur¬ 
chased a quantity of provisions. The 
inspectors of the articles at that place 
were Ebenezer and Samuel Wilson. 
The latter gentleman (universally 
known as “Uncle Sam,”) generally 
superintended in person a large num¬ 
ber of workmen, who, on this occasion, 
were employed in overhauling the pro¬ 
visions purchased by the contractor. 
The casks were marked U E. A.—U. S.” 
Their inspection fell to the lot of a 
facetious fellow, who, on being asked 
the meaning of the mark, said he did 
not know, unless it meant Elbert Ander¬ 
son and Uncle Sam , alluding to Uncle 
Sam Wilson. The joke took among 
the workmen, and passed currently; 
and “Uncle Sam,” when present, was 
often rallied by them on the increasing 
extent of his possessions. 










404 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ASSAYING. 

Assaying is a branch of chemical 
analysis, the object of which is to 
determine the quantity of gold or sil¬ 
ver in any mixture of the baser metals. 
As gold and silver have for many ages 
afforded the most obvious standard of 
value in civilized countries, it was of 
great importance to persons who dealt 
in coin, plate and similar articles, to 
be able to decide quickly and with cer¬ 
tainty on the exact portion of alloy 
which each piece might contain, and 
its exact weight to the minutest sub¬ 
division of weights. At an early period 
the trade of the goldsmith not only 
comprised, as now, the dealers in or 
makers of gold and silver articles, but 
also that trade which has, since the 
separation of the two ancient branches, 
received the name of Bankers. No 
tax was then levied on manufactured 
plate, but all articles made of gold and 
silver were to be of the same degree 
of purity as the coin of the realm. 
Whatever was manufactured in Lon¬ 
don, or in some of the larger places, 
was ordered to be assayed and stamped 
by the warders of the craft in such 
town; but whatever was made “where 
no touch was ordained ” was to be 
stamped by the maker, and if found 
beneath the proper standard, it was 
confiscated to the Crown. In this 
state of affairs, any article of plate 
would be of the same value in equal 
weights as gold or silver in ingots; and 
hence, as occasion might require, the 
vessels being worth no more than their 
weight, would be, on every pressing 
emergency, readily converted into coin. 
The workmanship of plate would in that 
age cost but little, as luxury had not 
reached the point in that kind of art, 
which it soon afterwards attained in 
the hands of Benvenuto Cellini, at 


Florence, and of his successors in the 
other parts of Europe. The taste dis¬ 
played in the forms and decorations of 
gold and silvei utensils was very coarse 
both in France and England. Vol¬ 
taire says that the work of the gold¬ 
smith in Paris was so bad that the King 
(Louis XII), in 1501, forbade the manu¬ 
facture, so that the French had their 
plate from Italy. There seems good 
reason to believe that the English of 
that period did not excel the French arti¬ 
sans in the fabrication of gold and sil¬ 
ver articles. Although the assay of 
the precious metals is very simple in 
principle, great skill is required. A 
skillful assayer is able, from the sample 
of a few grains, to determine the stand¬ 
ard of very large masses of the most 
valuable metals. The principle of 
assaying is as follows:—when gold, 
silver and platinum are exposed to the 
air, either in the solid state or in a state 
of fusion, they do not oxidize like the 
other metals, but retain their metallic 
lustre, on which account thev obtained 
their name of perfect or noble metals. 
Hence, when a noble metal is allo} 7 ed 
with an inferior metal, if the alloy be 
melted in contact with the air, the 
latter will gradually become oxidized 
and the scales of oxide rising to the 
surface, can be removed from time to 
time until the whole of the baser 
metal is separated. When the baser 
metal does not oxidize very readily, as 
in the case with copper, this separation 
becomes more difficult and even impos¬ 
sible by heat alone, if the portion of 
copper be small; but by adding to the 
mixture a portion of some metal which 
oxidizes very readily, such as lead or 
bismuth, the more refractory metal 
oxidizes with greater ease, and thus the 
noble metal is left pure. On this ac¬ 
count, litharge or oxide of lead, was 
termed by the old chemists, the bath 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


465 


of the noble metals, scouring or cleans¬ 
ing them, as it were, from their alloys 
of base metal, and leaving them bright 
and pure. 

PENS. 

The earliest pens, such as were used 
for writing on papyrus with a fluid 
ink, appear to have been made of reeds. 
In our translation of the Old and New 
Testaments, the word pen refers either 
to an iron style used with waxed tab¬ 
lets, or to a reed , quills not having been 
introduced earlier than the fifth cen¬ 
tury. It is uncertain what particular 
kind of reed was used for making pens, 
but it is described as a small, hard, 
round, swan’s quill. The supply of 
these reeds was obtained from Egypt, 
Cairo, in Asia Minor, and Armenia. 
Chardin and Tournefort describe a kind 
of reed used for pens in Persia. These 
reeds are collected near the shores of 
the Persian Gulf, whence they are 
sent to various parts of the East. After 
being cut, they are deposited for some 
months under a dunghill, when they 
assume a mixed black and yellow color, 
acquire a fine polish and a considerable 
degree of hardness and the interval 
pith dries up into a membrane which 
is easily detached. The quills used 
for pens are chiefly from the goose, 
the swan and the crow. The general 
use of steel pens has greatly lessened 
the demand for quills. Most of the 
goose quills are from the Netherlands 
and Germany, Russia and Poland. In 
the two latter countries vast flocks of 
geese were maintained for the sake of 
their quills. When the demand was 
large, this country has received from 
St. Petersburgh alone, as many as 27,- 
000,000 quills in one year. The quills 
as they come from the bird, are covered 
with a membrane and are tough and 
soft so that they will not make a clean 


slit. These defects are got rid of and 
the quills are prepared for the pen- 
maker, by sorting according to the 
length of and thickness of the barrel. 
They are then clarified by the removal 
of the membranous skin, for which 
purpose they are plunged for a short 
time into hot sand, the heat causing 
the outer skin to crack and peel off, 
its removal being facilitated by scrap¬ 
ing with a sharp instrument, at the 
same time the interval membrane be¬ 
comes shriveled up and falls down 
towards the point of the quill. The 
effect of the heat is also to consume or 
dry up the oily matter of the quill and 
thus to render the barrel transparent. 

This process, which may be repeated 
several times, is called dutch ing, prob¬ 
ably from the circumstance of its hav¬ 
ing been first adopted in Holland. The 
effect of the process is to give the bar¬ 
rels the color of fine, thin horn, or an 
impure white. In some cases a uni¬ 
form yellow color is produced by dip¬ 
ping the barrels in diluted nitric acid, 
this process hardens them. The quills 
having been dressed and finished, a 
portion of barb is stripped off so as to 
occupy less room in packing, and the 
quills are tied up in bundles of 25 or 
50 each, for the market. Before steel 
pens became common, a number of 
pens were cut out of the barrel of a 
quill, just as they are now cut out of 
sheet steel. From the softening of the 
quill pen by the ink, and the wear of 
the points by friction, frequent mend¬ 
ing was required and very bad writing 
was the result. The first attempts to 
render pens more permanent, consisted 
in arming the ribs with metallic points. 
Pens were also constructed of horn, 
tortoise and other shells and also of 
glass. Also horn and tortoise-shell 
were used, cut into ribs, softened in 
boiling water, and small pieces of dia- 








466 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


mond, ruby, etc., imbedded into them 
by pressure. Thin pieces of gold or 
other metal have also been attached to 
tortoise shell. Pens were also con¬ 
structed with two flat slips of gold, 
placed angularly, side by side, and 
tipped with rhodium. The first notice 
we find of steel pens for writing is in 
1803, when Mr. Wise constructed bar¬ 
rel pens of that metal, mounted in a 
bone case, for carrying in the pocket. 
These were costly and not very success¬ 
ful. This form of pen as improved by 
Mr. Gillott, of Birmingham, was for 
many years in request. In the im¬ 
proved pen, metal of better quality, 
thinner and more elastic, was employed; 
the slit was made shorter and the fin¬ 
ish and temper of the metal more care¬ 
fully attended to. At the same time, 
such was the reduction in price, that a 
gross of pens was sold for little more 
than what was charged for one of Mr. 
Wise’s pens. There are some doubts 
whether it was Mr. Gillott or Mr. Perry 
who first introduced the improvements 
which led to the present form and 
make of steel pens. It is claimed by 
both parties, each having taken out a 
number of patents for their pens. 


ROPE. 

Rope-making is an art which all 
nations seemed to have practiced from 
the earliest times. Various kinds of 
fibre have been used for the purpose 
such as hemp and flax, tough grass, the 
husk of the cocoanut, the fibres of the 
wild banana, etc.; animal substances 
have also been used such as strips of ox 
hide, horse hair and wool, and in our 
own day metalic wires have been twisted 
and plaited into cords and ropes of 
great strength, and of various sizes. 
Thongs of leather were used in the rig¬ 
ging of ships during many ages, and at 


the present time in some parts of the 
world ropes of considerable length and 
strength are made by twisting thongs 
of leather. The ancient Romans are 
said to have made ropes by the twisting 
of vegetable fibres long before the time 
of Caesar, and after the invasion of 
Britain by that people they are said to 
have used our native rushes or junci 
for forming ropes. Some writers sup¬ 
pose this to be the origin of the term 
junk applied to old cables and worn 
out ropes. 

BASKETS. 

The ancient Britons were celebrated 
for their baskets, which were exported 
in large quantities, and brought high 
prices in Rome. Baskets are made of 
osier, wicker, rushes, straw, twigs, 
branches, and different kinds of hard 
wood, prepared solely for this purpose. 
The art of interweaving twigs and 
reeds, is practiced among the rudest 
nations at the present day, and they 
even excel Europeans in this simple 
art. In some parts of South America, 
the natives make rush baskets so closely 
interwoven as to hold water. Wicker 
boats, covered with skins, attracted 
the notice of the Romans in Britain, 
and at the present day, basket boats 
made of split bamboo are used in Hin- 
dostan. Houses, cottages, fences and 
gates of wicker-work, are used in dif¬ 
ferent parts of the world. 


ALLIGATOR LEATHER. 

Twenty years ago the secret of tan¬ 
ning the alligator hide was revealed 
to a partner of a Boston boot and shoe 
house by an old Canadian. The busi¬ 
ness of collecting and tanning the 
skins was at once commenced, and 
now from 17,000 to 20,000 are tanned 
yearly, which, are consumed by boot 













THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


467 


nnd shoe manufacturers in every por¬ 
tion of the United States, as well as 
exported to London and Hamburg. In 
the foreign trade, however, the French 
are formidable rivals, owing to their 
superior methods of tanning, in which, 
as a nation, they beat the world. 

The alligators formerly came almost 
entirely from Louisiana, and New Or¬ 
leans was the great center of the busi¬ 
ness. Owing to their indiscriminate 
and judicious slaughter, however, the 
animals became thinned out, and but 
little business in that line is now done in 
the Crescent City. The Florida swamps 
and morasses are now the harvest fields, 
and Jacksonville, in that State, is the 
grand depot. The animals are killed 
in great numbers by the passengers of 
river steamboats, though there are 
hunters who make a regular business 
of their capture. The alligators often 
attain a length of eighteen to twenty 
feet, and frequently live to a fierce old 
age. The hides are stripped off, and 
the belly and sides, the only portions 
fit for use, are packed in barrels, in a 
strong brine, and shipped to the North¬ 
ern tanner, who keeps them under 
treatment for from six to eight months, 
when they are ready to be cut up. ' 

So far, the leather has been princi¬ 
pally used in the manufacture of boots 
and shoes, for which it is especially 
adapted; and, by reason of the pleas¬ 
ing variegation of its surface, makes a 
most excellent and becoming protection 
for the masculine, and, indeed, the 
feminine foot, for it is beginning to be 
employed in the manufacture of ladies 1 
boots. Handsome slippers are also 
made, both of the blacked and un¬ 
blacked skin, as well as shopping bags, 
portemonnaies, cigar cases and small 
leather goods, though, owing to the 
unfavorable state of trade, these latter 
have not been extensively introduced. 


CHANGING COLORS OF FLOWERS. 

Professor Grabba has been examining 
the effects of ammonia on the color of 
flowers. It is well known that the smoke 
of tobacco will, when applied in suffi¬ 
cient quantity, change the tint of 
flowers, but Professor Grabba experi¬ 
ments by pouring a little ammonia 
into a saucer and inverting a funnel 
over it. Placing the flowers in the tube 
of the latter, he finds that blue, violet 
and purple colored blossoms become of 
a fine green, carmine and crimson be¬ 
come black, white becomes yellow, 
while parti-colored flowers, such as 
red and white are turned to green and 
yellow. If the flowers are immersed 
in water, the natural color will return 
in a few hours. Professor Grabba also 
found that asters acquire a pleasing 
color when submitted to the fumes of 
ammonia. 


HOW THE FRENCH FATTEN THEIR 
POULTRY. 

Any of our countyyinen who, from 
rheumatic gout, or any other ailment, 
may be sent to Vichy, would do well, 
as soon as they have sufficiently re¬ 
covered the use of their legs, to pay a 
visit to the Villa Belvedere, where a 
very singular mode of fattening poul¬ 
try has been for some time successfully 
pursued. A large circular building, 
admirably ventilated, and with the 
light partially excluded, is fitted up 
with circular cages, in tiers rotating 
on a central axis, and capable of being 
elevated, depressed, or rotated, which 
are so arranged that each bird has as 
it were, a separate stall, containing a 
perch. The birds are placed with their 
tails converging to a common center, 
while the head of each may be brought 
in front by a simple rotary movement 
of the central axis. Each bird is 










468 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


fastened to its cell by leathern fetters, 
which prevent movement, except of 
the head and wings, without occasion¬ 
ing pain. When the feeding time 
comes, the bird is enveloped in a 
wooden case, from which the head and 
neck alone appear, and which is pop¬ 
ularly known as its u paletot, 11 by 
which means all unnecessary strug¬ 
gling is avoided. The attendant (a 
young girl) seizes the head in her left 
hand, and gently presses the beak, in 
order to open it; then, with her right, 
she introduces into the gullet a tin 
tube about the size of a finger. This 
tube is united to a flexible pipe, which 
communicates with the dish in which 
the food has been placed, and from 
which the desired quantity is instanta¬ 
neously injected into the stomach. 
The feeding process is so short that 
two hundred birds can be fed by one 
person in an hour. The food is a 
liquid paste, composed of Indian corn 
and barley saturated with milk. It is 
administered three times a day, in 
quantities varying according to the 
condition of each bird. The food 
seems to be very satisfactory, for if any 
chances to fall they devour it all as 
soon as they are released from their 
paletots. The poultry house is well 
ventilated; but, of course, it is impos¬ 
sible for any place where six hundred 
fowls are confined to be entirely free 
from smell. It takes about a fortnight 
to fatten a bird by this method. Be¬ 
fore being killed the birds are left in a 
dark but well ventilated chamber for 
twenty-four hours without food. Each 
fowl is then taken up by its feet, is 
wrapped up so as to prevent all strug¬ 
gling, and then bled so adroitly in the 
throat that its death seems instanta¬ 
neous. The blood is then allowed to 
flow from it, and finally, after being 
plucked, washed, and cleaned, it is 


wrapped in a damp cloth and is ready 
for sale. From forty to fifty fowls are 
thus killed and sold daily. 


MARINER’S COMPASS. 

The history or invention of the 
Mariner’s Compass is rather obscure. 
The honor of the invention or dis¬ 
covery has been often bestowed on 
Givia, a citizen of Amalphi, who lived 
about the commencement of the four¬ 
teenth century. But the polarity of 
the magnet was known to the Saraces 
at least two hundred years before that 
time; through even after the time of 
Givia it was long before the magnet 
was made use of as a guide in naviga¬ 
tion. The writers of the thirteenth 
century who mention the polarity of 
the needle, mention also its use in 
navigation; yet Capmany has found no 
distinct proof of its employment till 
1403 and does not believe that it was 
frequently on board Mediterranean 
ships at the latter part of the pre¬ 
ceding age. The Genoese, however, 
are known in the fourteenth century to 
have come out of that inland sea and 
steered for Flanders and England. 
The greatest sailors of the age were 
the Spaniards and Portuguese. This 
nation had little or no existence during 
the greater part of the middle ages, 
but in the twelfth, thirteenth and four¬ 
teenth centuries, they were able to 
expel the Moors from a great part of 
their country; and in the beginning of 
the fifteenth, John, surnamed the Bas¬ 
tard, who was then their king, was the 
first European prince who exhibited a 
respectable navy. It was in the year 
1486, that this adventurous people first 
doubled the Cape of Good Hope. 

Pleadings in courts of judicature, 
introduced A. D., 788. 











THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


409 


ANCIENT AND MODERN THEATRES. 


The origin of the drama is invoh ed 
in obscurity, dating far back in pre¬ 
historic ages, although it was by no 
means known to all nations even 
among the ancients. Thus there is in 
Hebrew literature no trace of tli 3 
drama proper, although the solemn 
feasts and significant, impressive cere¬ 
monies of the old Jewish religion were 
not without a strong dramatic effect, 
and presented to the children’s children 
of the generation that followed Moses 
out of Egypt, a thrilling allegorical 
history of their fathers’ escape from 
bondage. The people of Western Asia, 
the Arabians and the Persians, knew 
nothing of the drama, whereas the 
Etruscans of Italy, so strongly resem¬ 
bling the Egyptians in other particu¬ 
lars, had their theatres, and the Etrus¬ 
can name for an actor, histrio, is still 
preserved and used to day, in our 
u histrion.” The ancient Peruvians 
had their tragedies and comedies, and 
even in the South Sea Islands, the first 
English circumnavigators found a rude 
kind of drama. The Chinese have had 
their theatres from the earliest days of 
their history, but their drama has never 
improved, and is to day what it was, 
no man can tell how long ago. Their 
plays are almost interminable in 
length, and require days and sometimes 
even weeks for presentation. The 
invention of dramatic entertainments 
is usually ascribed by Hindu writers to 
a Muni, or inspired sage, named 
Bharata, about b. c. 600 ; but, accord¬ 
ing to some authorities, they had a still 
more elevated origin, and the art, 
having been gathered from the Yedas 
(sacred writings) by the god Brahma, 
was by him communicated to the 
Muni. The dramatic representations 
first invented consisted of three kinds 


—Natya, Nritya, Nritta; and these 
were exhibited before the gods by the 
spirits and nymphs of Indra’s heaven, 
who were trained by Bharata to the 
exhibition. The god Siva added two 
other kinds, the Tandava and Lasya. 
Of these, only one, the Natya, is prop¬ 
erly the dramatic, being defined to be 
gesticulation with language. The 
Nritya is gesticulation without lan¬ 
guage, or pantomine; and the Nritta is 
simple dancing. Tandava and Lasya 
are only styles of dancing. The attri¬ 
bution of the invention of dramatic 
performances to Bharata is founded 
upon his having been one of the earli¬ 
est writers by whom the art was 
reduced to a system. The dramatic 
writings of the Hindus present no dis¬ 
tinction between comedy and tragedjf. 
The Hindu dramas are invariably of a 
mingled web, and blend seriousness 
and sorrow with levity and laughter, 
but never, however, offer a calamitous 
conclusion; and although they propose 
to excite all the emotions of the human 
breast, terror and pity included, they 
never effect this object by leaving a 
painful impression upon the mind of 
the spectator. This absence of tragic 
catastrophe is not an unconscious 
omission, but is prohibited by a positive 
rule, and the death of either the hero 
or the heroine is never to be announced. 
A regard for decorum also provides 
that death must invariably be inflicted 
out of the view of the spectators; also 
that the following topics shall be inter¬ 
dicted: hostile defiance, solemn impre¬ 
cations, exile, degradation, national 
calamity, biting, scratching, kissing, 
eating, sleeping, the bath, the unction, 
the marriage ceremony; and a wife was 
never to be made the object of a dra¬ 
matic intrigue. In these respects the 
Hindu drama is a rebuke to many of 
the dramatic writings of modern Chris- 






470 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


tendom. The Hindus never had any 
building appropriated to public enter¬ 
tainments, and consequently they had 
no complicated system of scenery or 
properties. 

Among the Greeks, the drama had 
its rise in the banquets and feasts in 
the service of their heathen deities. 
Greece was pre-eminently the land of 
music and poetry, and as both were 
largely used in their worship, their 
choruses and hymns and dances natur¬ 
ally developed into the drama, which 
thus found its origin in the rude festivi¬ 
ties on the Grecian feast days. The 
hymns addressed immediately to the 
divinity round the altar, during the 
service, were grave, lofty and restrained. 
The songs inspired by the carousals of 
the banquet, and uttered amid the rev¬ 
elries of the Phallic procession, were 
coarse, ludicrous and satirical, inter¬ 
spersed with mutual jest and gibe. 
The hymn which accompanied the 
opening festival was called the dithy¬ 
ramb-—a term of doubtful import, and 
perhaps, like the repulsive symbol of 
the Phallic rites, of Eastern origin. 
Besides the dithyrambic chorus and 
the singers of the Phallic, there was a 
third class of performers in these festi¬ 
vals—fauns and satyrs, attendants of 
the deity; and their half-animal char¬ 
acter was quite in harmony with the 
merry Dionysia. The goat was the 
appropriate offering in the Bacchic 
sacrifice. In the horns and hide of the 
victim, all that was requisite to furnish 
satyric guise was at hand; and thus a 
band of mummers was easily formed, 
whose wit, waggery and grimace would 
prove no insignificant addition to the 
amusement of the village carnival. In 
these rude festivities the splendid 
drama of the Greeks found its origin. 
The lofty poetry of the dithyramb, 
joined with the epic elements of the 


Ionians, was at length wrought out 
into majestic tragedy. The Phallic 
song was expanded and improved into 
the old comedy, and the tragic chorus 
originated in the Dorian chorus of 
dancers. At first the whole population 
took a part in the choral music and 
dancing; but with the gradual improve¬ 
ment of their music, the ruder efforts 
of the old crowd of worshipers were 
necessarity superseded; and the poet, 
as “State-workman,” with his band of 
trained singers and dancers, at length 
executed all the religious functions of 
the collective population. The next 
step towards the drama was the intro¬ 
duction of the warlike dances of the 
Dorians into the celebration of Bac¬ 
chic worship. Arion, a celebrated 
citliara-player, about b. c. 600 , invented 
the Cyclic chorus, in which the dithy¬ 
ramb was danced around the blazing 
altar by a band of fifty men or boys, to 
a lyric accompaniment. Arion thus, 
by composing regular poems to be sung 
to the lyre, at once raised the dithy¬ 
ramb to a literary position. He turned 
the irregular eomus into a standing 
chorus, and the steps of the altar of 
Bacchus became a stage on which lyric 
poetry in his honor was solemnly 
recited, and accompanied by corres¬ 
ponding gesticulations. He was also 
the inventor of the tragic style, a style 
of music or harmony adapted to and 
intended for a chorus of satyrs. 

The tragedy, so soon as it had once 
established itself in Greece, made rapid 
progress. The invention of tragedy is 
popularly ascribed to Thespis, in the 
sixth century B. c. He introduced an 
actor for the sake of resting the Diony¬ 
sian chorus, and this actor was gener¬ 
ally, perhaps always, himself, in 
order to disguise his features he smeared 
his face with a pigment prepared from 
the herb purslain, and afterwards con- 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


471 


suited a linen mask, in order, proba¬ 
bly, that he might be able to sustain 
more than one character. He also 
introduced some important alterations 
into the dances of the chorus. Thespis 
was by birth a worshiper of Bacchus, 
and from the subjects of his recitations 
it would also appear that he was a 
rhapsode. Here, then, we have the 
union of Dionysian rites with rhapso¬ 
dical recitations. But he went a step 
farther: he did not confine his speech 
to mere narration; he addressed it to 
the chorus, which carried on with him, 
by means of its coryphaei, a sort of 
dialogue. The chorus stood upon the 
steps of the thymele, or altar of Bac¬ 
chus; and in order that he might 
address them from an equal elevation, 
the actor was placed upon a table, 
which was the predecessor of the stage. 
After Thespis,Phrynichus,his pupil, be¬ 
came the leader of tragedy, and he was 
once fined 1,000 drachmae for having so 
forcibly recalled in his acting, the cap¬ 
ture of Miletus, by the Persians, that 
the audience was affected to tears. 
Phrynichus was the first to introduce 
female characters on the stage. Fol¬ 
lowing Phrynichus, iEschylus, born 
525 b. c. was the next to improve the 
tragedy, and he almost perfected it. 
Sophocles, who gained his first prize in 
tragedy over iEschylus, b. c. 408, was 
the perfection of Greek dramatic art. 
Euripides, who was born b. c. 480, was 
the last of the Greek tragedians, prop¬ 
erly so called. 

The place of exhibition was, in the 
days of the perfect Greek drama, the 
great stone theatre erected within the 
Lenaeon, or inclosure sacred to Bacchus, 
at Athens. The building was com¬ 
menced b. c. 500, but not finished until 
about 381. In the earlier days of the 
drama the theatre was of wood, but an 
accident having occurred at the pre¬ 


sentation of some plays by iEschylus 
and Pratinas, the stone theatre was 
commenced in its stead. To entertain 
an adequate notion of the Greek theatre, 
it must not be forgotten that it was only 
an improvement upon the mode of 
representation adopted by Thespis. 
The two original elements were the altar 
of Bacchus, round which the Cyclian 
chorus danced, and the stage from 
which the actor spoke, and which was 
the representative of the wooden table 
from which the earliest actor addressed 
his chorus. But in the great stone 
theatres these were surrounded by a 
mass of buildings, and subordinate to 
other details of a very artificial and 
complicated description. In building 
a theatre the Greeks always availed 
themselves of the slope of a hill, which 
enabled them to give the necessary 
elevation to the back rows of seats, 
without those enormous substructions 
found in Roman theatres. If the hill¬ 
side was rocky, semi-circles of steps, 
hewn out of the living material, rose 
tier above tier; but if the ground was 
soft, an excavation was made, and 
afterwards lined with rows of stone 
benches. The scenery and mechanical 
contrivances of the Athenian stage 
were hardly inferior to those of the 
modern stage. Scene-painting in the 
time of Agatharchus, a celebrated 
scenic artist, contemporary with 
iEschylus, became a distinct and highly 
cultivated branch of art; and the 
scenery, which was regularly placed 
before the main scene, was apparently 
painted on canvas, the framework 
being of solid wood. When groves 
were represented, real evergreens were 
placed upon the stage. The scenery 
■was arranged on perspective principles, 
and no expense was spared to make 
the illusion perfect. Besides the trian¬ 
gular revolving prisms, before referred 









472 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


to, and which were also used occa¬ 
sionally to introduce a sea divinity on 
his fish-tail steed, a river god with his 
urn, or other incidental apparitions, 
there was a machine on wheels which 
displayed an interior of a chamber or 
other room, and which could be moved 
on to the stage through any of the 
principal doors. Deities conversed 
with the actors or chorus from a plat¬ 
form surrounded by clouds, and sus¬ 
pended from the top of the central 
scene. There was a contrivance for 
snatching up an actor from the stage 
and raising him to the balcony of the 
scene; and by an arrangement of ropes 
and pullies, Bellerophon or Trygaeus 
could fly across the stage. Then there 
was a contrivance for imitating the 
sound of thunder, which appears to 
have been bladders full of pebbles, 
which were rolled over sheets of cop¬ 
per. The appearance of lightning was 
produced by means of a triangular 
prism of mirrors. And the catalogue 
of Julius Pollux speaks of a great 
variety of other ingenious contrivances. 
It was not by the desire to enliven 
their holiday leisure by such exhibi¬ 
tions that the Romans were led to the 
invention of theatrical amusements; 
but (b. c. 364) in the disconsolateness 
of a pestilence they first caught at the 
theatrical spectacle, as an experiment 
to propitiate the wrath of the gods, 
the exercises and games of the circus 
having till then been their only public 
exhibitions. But the histriones, whom 
for this purpose they called in from 
Etruria, were only dancers. Their 
oldest spoken dramas, the Atellane 
Fables, were borrowed from the Oscans, 
and with these Saturnae (so called 
because they were at first improvisatory 
farces, without dramatic coherence, for 
saturna means a medley) they rested 
satisfied till Livius Andronicus, b. c. 


240, began to imitate the Greeks, and 
introduced the regular kind of drama, 
namely, tragedy and new comedy. 
Thus the Romans were indebted to the 
Etruscans for their first notion of the 
stage spectacle, to the Oscans for the 
effusion of sportive humor, and to the 
Greeks for the higher cultivation. But 
the Romans lacked that mild spirit of 
humanity which is noticeable in Gre¬ 
cian history, and in tragedy they aimed 
at the wildest extremes. In their tri¬ 
umphal processions, gladiatorial games 
and wild beast fights, the spectator, 
though he was shown all the magnifi¬ 
cence of the world, was glutted with 
the most violent scenes of blood. 
When Rome was converted to Christi¬ 
anity, the princes suppressed the glad¬ 
iatorial combats but the game* of the 
circus and the pantomine continued to 
be popular from the age of Augustus 
to the sixth century. 

Ancient art declined with the ad¬ 
vance of Christianity, and after a long 
period of stagnation there arose, from 
the inspiration of the cloisters, Mys¬ 
teries and Miracle plays, Moralities and 
Histories, which were acted on movable 
stages in the churches, or in the 
streets. In the Moralities, allegorical 
- personifications of the virtues and 
vices were introduced and the Histories 
were long, rambling pieces without 
much form or object. The first mira¬ 
cle plays were six Latin plays, written 
by Roswitha, a nun of Ganderslieim, 
in Saxony. The earliest recorded per¬ 
formance of a miracle play took place 
at Dunstable, in England, in the begim 
ning of the 12th century. 

The first regular modern drama was 
the “ Sophonisba, 1 ’ of Trissino, and 
was acted at Rome in 1515 before Pope 
Leo X. This tragedy was followed by 
the dramas of Ariosto of Babbiena and of 
Maechiavelli, and the drama developed 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


473 


and extended its field until in 1562 the 
comedy of intrigue was introduced by 
Lopez de Vega in Spain, which was 
imitated and greatly improved by the 
French. Goethe and Schiller followed 
in the 18th century. Cornielle pro¬ 
duced his tragedy of “ The Cid ” in 
1636; Moliere, the founder of French 
Comedy, appeared on the stage in 
1645; and at last the revelation of a 
perfect form of the romantic drama, 
was given the world by Shakespeare. 
This greatest of all dramatic geniuses 
was born at Stratford-on-Avon, War¬ 
wickshire, about April 23, 1564. In 
1586 he went to London, and in 1589 
his name appears as a sharer in the 
Blackfriars 1 Theatre; twelfth among a 
commonwealth of sixteen. “ Venus 
and Adonis” was his first work pub¬ 
lished. It appeared in 1593. The 
Globe Theatre, with which he is identi¬ 
fied, was opened about 1595, and 1604 
is the probable date of Shakespeare’s 
retirement from the stage as an actor. 
He died April 23,1616. The construc¬ 
tion of Shakespeare’s plays is so per¬ 
fect that there was nothing left for 
succeeding dramatists to improve, and 
their literary merits are so transcend¬ 
ental that none can hope to equal 
them. The principal of Shakespeare’s 
contemporaries are Ben Johnson and 
Beaumont and Fletcher; and following 
them we have Massinger, Ford and 
Shirley, with whom the old English 
drama is closed. Dryden was the lead¬ 
ing playwright of the latter half of 
the seventeenth century, and Lee and 
Otway bring down the drama to the 
beginning of the next century, while 
Gay, Congreve, Cibber, Wycherley, 
Vanburgh and Farquhar wrote plays 
which were morally impure, but good 
specimens of the comedy of manners. 
Lillo, Moore, Garrick the actor, Gold¬ 
smith, the Colmans and Cumberland 


all produced agreeable comedies; but 
nothing of a marked kind in the his¬ 
tory of the drama of the eighteenth 
century appears until the time of 
Sheridan, who is placed at the head of 
writers of genteel comedy. Mrs. Inch- 
bald, Holcroft, Monk, Lewis and Ma- 
turin wrote plays modeled after the 
German school; and Joanna Baillie, 
Sheridan Knowles, Bulwer Lytton, 
Talfourd, Jerrold, Shirley Brooks and 
Westland Marston bring down the 
drama to the playwrights of the 
present day, whose names it is unnec¬ 
essary to repeat, as they are con¬ 
stantly before us. It is questionable if 
the American drama has yet been cre¬ 
ated. Undoubtedly we have an Ameri¬ 
can drama, in so far as plays have 
been written by American dramatists, 
whose characters are American and the 
incidents in which are local; but does 
it possess those intrinsic literary merits 
which would preserve it to posterity, 
as the works of Shakespeare, Goethe 
and Moliere have been preserved to us ? 
America has, however, given birth to 
some of the most eminent actors; and 
as our language is the language of 
Shakespeare, we have an equal right 
with the English-speaking people of 
the older stock to claim him and the 
other great poets as our common prop¬ 
erty. The first American playwright 
was Thomas Godfrey, who published 
his “Prince of Parthia” in 1765; and 
on April 16, 1787, a comedy, entitled 
“ Contrast,” by Robert Tyler of Massa¬ 
chusetts, was acted at the John street 
Theatre, New York. The first authen¬ 
tic record we have of plays being acted 
in America was in the Autumn of 1748, 
when a theatrical company was formed 
in Philadelphia, but most probably 
amateur performances were given long 
before that. In 1750 this company 
played in Williamsburg, Va., and in 





474 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


New York, and shortly thereafter, as 
will be seen by a perusal of our u The¬ 
atrical Chronology,” theatres sprang 
up in various parts of the country. 


TRANSFUSION OF BLOOD. 

The transfusion of blood, although 
it may have been practiced earlier than 
the seventeenth century, was some¬ 
what extensively studied during a 
period ranging from 1657 to the close 
of that century. The principal expe¬ 
rimenters during this period were 
Clark, Lower, Harwood and King, in 
England; Denys, Emmerez, Prevost 
and Dumas, in France, and Riva and 
Manfredi, in Italy. 

The operation consists in taking blood 
from the veins of a human being or 
an animal and immediately injecting 
it into the circulatory system of an¬ 
other. The operation may be thus 
described: The subject into whose sys¬ 
tem the blood is to be transfused, has 
a slight opening made in a vein (if hu¬ 
man, the veins elected is generally in the 
left arm) sufficient to admit the inser¬ 
tion of a small tube. At the same 
time, blood is taken from the veins of 
another subject, and being drawn into 
an appropriate syringe, is injected 
through the first mentioned tube into 
the veins of the former. Great care 
is necessary to avoid the injection of 
air bubbles or small clots. The opera¬ 
tion must also be performed slowly, as 
otherwise a fatal shock may be given 
to an enfeebled patient. 

The first experiments of which we 
have record, were made upon dogs, or 
other domesticated animals of like 
species, but they were soon extended 
to transfusion of blood from an animal 
of one species into the veins of an¬ 
other of widely different species. Thus 
the blood of sheep was injected into the 


veins of dogs without apparent injury. 

Denys and Emmerez were the first 
to attempt the operation upon a hu¬ 
man subject. They publicly injected 
the blood of a sheep into the veins of 
an idiot upon two occasions. The first 
operation seemed to result in no in¬ 
jury. In fact, it was thought that 
visible mental improvement was the 
result. The second, however, resulted 
fatally, the patient shortly becoming 
lethargic and dying in that condition. 
This took place in 1666. In 1667, one, 
Arthur Covn, volunteered to submit 
to the same operation, and it was per¬ 
formed upon him twice by Lower and 
King. The first time, ten ounces of 
sheep’s blood were transfused without 
apparent injury, but on the second 
trial, unfavorable symptoms resulted. 
The same thing was done in Italy in 
1668, but about that time Denys and 
Emmerez performed transfusion upon 
a young German Baron in Paris, who 
was afflicted with disease of the intes¬ 
tines, who shortly after died from result¬ 
ing inflammation. This result occurred 
upon the second operation, the blood 
transfused being that of a calf. 

The French government then pro¬ 
scribed the practice, and the Pope also 
issued an edict of prohibition. Prof. 
Harwood, of Cambridge University, 
strove to bring this practice again into 
notice in 1785, and was followed by Dr. 
Blundell about the beginning of the 
present century, w r ho with Prevost and 
Dumas, first enunciated the true prin¬ 
ciples upon which its successful appli¬ 
cation has been made. He showed 
that the organic differences in the 
blood of different species, could not 
but render admixture harmful, and 
confined the practice, so far as human 
subjects were involved, to the transfu¬ 
sion of human blood solely. Blundell 
kept a dog alive for three weeks with- 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


475 


out food by transfusing into its jugu¬ 
lar the blood of other dogs. 

The Medical Record also gives an 
account of a successful operation for 
the transfusion of blood performed by 
Dr. Enrico Albanese at the hospital of 
Palermo, Sicily. A youth, aged seven¬ 
teen, named Giuseppe Ginazzo, of Cin- 
isi, was received at that establishment 
on the 29th of September last, with 
an extensive ulceration of the leg, 
which in the end rendered amputation 
necessary, the patient being very much 
emaciated and laboring under fever. 
The operation reduced him to a worse 
state than ever, and it became appar¬ 
ent that he was fast sinking, the pulse 
being imperceptible, the eyes dull, and 
the body cold. In this emergency, Dr. 
Albanese had recourse to the transfu¬ 
sion of blood as the only remedy that 
had not yet been tried. Two assistants 
of the hospital offered to have their 
veins opened for the purpose, and thus, 
at two different intervals, 220 grammes 
of blood were introduced into the pa¬ 
tient’s system. After the first time he 
recovered the faculty of speech, and 
stated that before he could neither see 
nor hear, but felt as if he were flying 
in the air. He is now in a fair state of 
recovery. 

The operation has been performed also 
in cases of collapse from cholera with 
success, the patient in such cases be¬ 
coming almost instantaneously warm¬ 
er and exhibiting most marked relief. 
The evidences are then, on the whole, 
favorable to the operation when de¬ 
manded by extreme cases, as it has no 
doubt, in a number of instances, 
snatched from the very jaws of death, 
those who otherwise could not have 
recovered. 


Plays were first acted at Rome, 
239, 13. C. 


MYRRH. 

This substance is an agreeable per¬ 
fume and is much valued by Eastern 
nations for its antiseptic qualities as 
well as for its delightful odor. It was 
and is largely used as a component 
part of incense, and also in the em¬ 
balming of the dead. In the tombs of 
Egypt, where the mummies of the 
great have lain in preservation for ages 
past, the odor of myrrh is very strong, 
and we have every reason to believe 
that it was one of the chief ingredients 
in the preparation of mummies. It is 
a gum resin, and occurs in tears of 
various sizes. They are reddish-brown, 
semi-transparent, brittle, of a shining 
fracture, appear as if greasy under the 
pestle, have a very acrid and bitter 
taste, and a strong smell. Myrrh flows 
from the incisions of a tree not well 
known, which grows in Arabia and 
Abyssinia, supposed to be a kind of 
amyris or mimosa. It consists of resin 
and gum in the proportions of 36 of 
the former to 66 of the latter. We 
use it only as a medicine. 


AMBERGRIS. 

This singular substance is one 
among those derived from animal 
sources that are employed in the per¬ 
fumer’s art, and although its origin 
would seem to preclude its use by the 
fastidious, the same objection would 
equally apply to musk, the product of 
the civet cat or musk deer, which if 
not an excretion is a secretion intended 
probably, as is the offensive liquid 
ejected by the skunk, as a means of 
defense. Ambergris, or u gray amber ” 
as its name denotes, is simply and 
only a portion of the excreta of the 
sperm whale, Physeter macrocephalous , 
resulting from disease. It is considered 













476 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


generally to be a result of a morbid 
secretion of the whale’s liver, and is 
probably produced also by other oceanic 
mammalia. It is usually found float¬ 
ing on the surface of the sea in those 
parts of the ocean most frequented by 
the spermaceti whale; a small barren 
island off the coast of Yucatan, having 
received its name of Ambergris from 
the quantity of that substance found 
on its shores. 

Whale fishers look for it in the 
intestines of the whale, and its value is 
so great that whalemen pursue with 
eagerness the sickly cetaceae although 
they promise a scant return of oil. It 
is amorphous, or in roundish pieces, 
frequently formed in layers, of a gray¬ 
ish color — whence its name — with 
streaks of whitish yellow, brown, or 
black. It has a waxy texture and 
when warmed emits a pungent odor. 
It is for this quality it is so highly 
esteemed. It has been sold for its 
weight in gold. It is very scarce and 
seldom appears except as u essence of 
amber” or “extrait d’ambre,” forms of 
perfumery having this material for 
their base and bearing a very high 
price. 

Its discovery is not at all new. It is 
pretty certain it was known as a rare 
perfume in the fifteenth century, for 
Sinbad, the sailor, being wrecked some¬ 
where in the Indian Ocean, says: 

u Here is also a fountain of pitch 
and bitumen that runs into the sea, 
which the fishes swallow, and then 
vomit up again, turned into amber- 
gns. 

It is generally found in small quan¬ 
tities of only a few pounds or perhaps 
ounces in weight, but large masses 
have been discovered, one weighing 

1 o o 

174 lbs. having been purchased in the 
East Indies by the Dutch, and a mass 
of 237 lbs. being obtained by the 


French East India Company. Lately, 
however we read that Captain Timothj^ 
C. Spaulding, of the bark Elizabeth of 
New Bedford, while coming southwest 
of Madagascar, struck a very large 
sperm whale. On opening the whale 
they had the good luck to discover 285 
pounds of ambergris—worth on the 
spot $20,000. 

Another New Bedford whale ship, 
the Herald, brought home 71 lbs. of 
this substance that sold for $97 per lb. 


WAX FRUIT MAKING. 

Closely allied to wax flower making 
is that of wax fruit, some specimens of 
which are marvellous for their faithful 
imitation of nature. Here moulding 
or casting is of more importance than 
in flower making, seeing that accuracy 
of form is the chief desideratum. 
Most kinds of imitative fruit are 
shaped in double moulds, one for each 
half, and if the fruit is irregular in its 
curvatures a tripartite mould may be 
needed. Say that an orange is to be 
imitated in wax, a smooth, damp sur¬ 
face of sand is prepared, into which 
exactly one-half of a good orange is 
carefully pressed; a cordon or border of 
tin or stiff paper is built up around it 
about half an inch distance from the 
orange on all sides; plaster of Paris, in 
a cream-like consistency, is then 
poured into the cell thus made, so as to 
fully cover the orange; when quite 
firm enough to handle, this plaster 
half-mould is taken up and the orange 
extricated; the orange is turned over 
in the sand and another half-mould 
made in a similar way. Whether 
fruit is cast solid or hollow depends 
mainly on the size: if large, the mass 
would be heavy and much wax wasted 
by solid casting; in this case a core of 
some rough material is fixed in the 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


477 


middle of the mould, which gives a 
cavity to the middle of the fruit. 

Soft kinds of fruit, such as plums, 
cherries, and ripe pears, and some hard 
and unyielding fruits, require special 
management to extricate them from 
the half-mould without injury to the 
fruit on the one hand or to the mould 
on the other. Pomegranates, medlars, 
pine-apples, etc., require moulds in 
more than two parts. Occasionally, 
elastic moulds of glue are found advan¬ 
tageous. Generally speaking, the color 
of the wax employed is tnat of the 
lightest parts of the fruit, the deeper 
tints being afterward laid on with 
brush and pencil. The chief pigments 
employed are such as burnt and raw 
umber and sienna, chrome yellow, red 
lead, Prussian blue, carmine, lake, etc., 
greens being produced by various ad¬ 
mixtures of blue and yellow. 

Certain small varieties of fruit, such 
as grapes and currants, are made of 
glass bulbs, carefully blown to the 
proper shape; these are fixed by wax 
to wire inserted into holes, and are 
then dipped into melted wax of the 
proper color, a very thin coating of 
which gives the proper kind of semi¬ 
transparency to the glass, and at the 
same time a smoothness of surface not 
inaptly resembling that of the natural 
fruit. The fastening of the various 
fruits to imitative stems, leaves, leaflets, 
etc., is an affair of wires, silken thread, 
strips of green paper, white flock, 
arrowroot-paste, gum-mastic ; varnish, 
with other simple materials and tools 
employed in artificial flower making. 


WOOD BENDING. 

The use of bent wood for an increas¬ 
ing variety of purposes surpasses the 
knowledge even of those most familiar 
with its production. It is used in all 


departments of business and pursuits 
of life, wherever man and his products 
are known. It is as ancient as history, 
and is found among those in the 
rudest state of barbarianism. Little is 
known of the most ancient devices for 
bending wood, but the oldest patented 
in England is now nearly a century 
old, and is used there yet for some 
purposes. The oldest in the United 
States was used first Jn 1794 up to 
1821, then patented with but little 
change. In 1813, at the Woolwich 
Navy Yard, in England, floor timbers, 
sixteen inches square, for a man-of- 
war, were bent over an arc of a circle 
with a radius of four feet. 


MADDER. 

The plant known as madder belongs 
to the genus Rubia, of which there 
are several varieties, one species being 
used in dyeing textiles a red color. 
The root is also used by medical men, 
and is in great reputation as an 
emmenagogue. It is extensively culti¬ 
vated in Smyrna, France, and Holland. 
Madder is rich in nitrogen, and has 
been used from the earliest times in 
connection with several re-agents by 
the dyer, and especially with indigo. 
The best cultivated madder comes 
from Smyrna, and the next in quality 
from Holland, but some very fine, as 
well as very poor varieties, are grown 
in France. The second grade of 
French is said to give one-third less 
color than the second grade of Dutch. 

A very valuable plant of this specie 
grows wild in certain sections of South 
America, which is said to fully equal, 
and in some respects even excels any 
kind of European growth. 

Dutch madder is first ground in a 
suitable mill, and is then separated 
into four distinct grades, known as 










478 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


crop, umbro, gamene, and mull; each 
of these being possessed of many 
different shades of quality. The crop 
is used for fine reds, and the mull for 
dark browns, drabs, and dark bottle- 
greens. The umbro and the gamene 
are used by woolen dyers for common 
colors, and for the blue vats, in connec¬ 
tion with indigo or other suitable 
substances. A specie of rubia called 
mungeet is imported to some extent 
from the East Indies in bales and 
belongs to the family of madders. It 
has long slender roots, the largest of 
which are about the »ize of a pipe- 
stem. The color obtained from this 
root is similar to that obtained from 
the regular madder, excepting that it 
is of a deeper red. This article is 
sometimes used as a substitute for 
Dutch madder. When madder is held 
at a very high price, it may pay to 
import mungeet; otherwise it is almost 
entirely neglected. 

European madder being put up in 
casks, the outside layers are more or 
less damaged by access to the air 
through the seams between the staves; 
when sold, therefore, in the various 
foreign markets, an allowance is made 
for what is called crust. The injury to 
the root may be discovered by boring 
in from the bilge to the centre of the 
cask; upon drawing out the borer and 
examining its filling, an estimate can 
be formed of the average loss, which is 
usually from ten to twenty-five per 
cent. 

Formerty many blue-dyers were 
under the impression that madder, by 
giving out its red dye to the liquor, 
produced by a union with blue a rich 
purple color; but this theory, on prac¬ 
tical application, has been found to be 
erroneous. 

Madder-reds are usually applied to 
woolens after they have been fulled, as 


the soap used in the process of fulling 
changes the coloring matter if applied 
previously. Cloths of coarse quality, 
such as flannels, long baize, etc., are 
usually colored in this manner. Since 
the general introduction of lac-dye 
and aniline-reds, the finer class of 
fabrics have been dyed after the more 
modern and improved processes. The 
properties of these dyes are brilliant 
and are quite enduring. Lac is rela¬ 
tively cheaper than cochineal, while 
the cost is not so great as that from 
madder at fourteen cents per pound. 

Madder can be raised in most parts 
of the United States. Commonly it is 
raised in gardens, and the root being 
dried is ready for market. The quality 
usually raised in the Southern and 
Middle States is said to be excellent, 
and about equal to that produced 
from the second quality of the Dutch 
crop. 

The plant is cultivated as follows, 
viz:—The land is plowed deeply and 
harrowed finely, and subsequently 
thrown up into ridges, in order that it 
may be exposed to the action and 
influence of the Winter frosts. Early 
in the Spring the ridges should be 
harrowed down, and then plowed to a 
good depth in a contrary direction 
from the first furrow. When the land 
is not perfectly free from weeds it 
requires additional cultivation. When 
sufficiently fine and mellow, and in as 
level a condition as possible, the seeds 
can be sown, or sets of old plants 
placed at a distance of five inches 
apart one way and two feet the other. 
It requires about thirty thousand 
plants for an acre. It is of the great¬ 
est consequence that the plants be 
kept free from weeds, the rich earth 
stirred about the roots. In favorable 
seasons and in suitable conditions the 
crop may be rendered fairly profitable 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


479 


at present prices. It requires three or 
lour years to fully mature this root, 
when dug sooner it is not so valuable. 
Madder has of late years been to a 
considerable extent supplanted as a 
dye, although the importations are 
still very considerable. 


FIRST MAPLE SUGAR. 

The important discovery that sugar 
can be made from the maple tree, has 
been attributed to New England, and 
its date fixed as far back as 1765, in 
an article which has gone the rounds 
of the press. This statement has 
called forth a unanimous, indignant 
and patriotic protest on the part 
of the French Canadian press, who 
claim the priority of discovery. They 
state that maple sugar was in gen¬ 
eral use in Canada previous to the 
Revolution, and long before Dudley's 
Begister recorded, in 1765, its first 
manufacture in New England. In¬ 
deed, the Jesuit priest Charleroix, in 
his History of New France (Canada), 
wrote as early as 1721 an account of 
the process by which the sugar was 
obtained, stating that the sugar was 
unknown to the Indians, thus favoring 
its French origin. All honor, then, 
to the French Canadians for the maple 
sugar, unless our New England cotem¬ 
poraries have records to substantiate 
their claim beyond the year 1721. 


HOW MONKEYS ARE CAPTURED. 

Monkeys are pretty common, yet, as 
all the families are remarkably cun¬ 
ning, has it ever occurred to the reader 
how they are taken P Pitfalls will take 
a lion, and the famished monarch will, 
after a few days 1 starvation, dart into a 
cage containing food, and thus be se¬ 
cured. But how are monkeys caught ? 


The ape family resemble man. Their 
vices -are human. They love liquor 
and fall. In Darfour and Senor, the 
natives make a fermented beer, of 
which the monkeys are passionately 
fond. Aware of this, the natives go 
to the parts of the forest frequented 
by the monkeys, and set on the ground 
calabashes full of the enticing liquor. 
As soon as the monkey sees and tastes 
it, he utters loud cries of joy, that soon 
attract his comrades. Then an orgie 
begins, and then in a short time they 
show all degrees of intoxication. Then 
the negroes appear. The few who came 
too late to get fuddled, escape. The 
drinkers are too far gone to distrust 
them, but apparently take them for a 
larger species of their own genus. 
The negroes take some up, and these 
begin to weep and cover them with 
maudlin kisses. When a negro takes 
one by the hand to lead him off, the 
nearest monkey will cling to the one 
who thus finds a support, and endeavor 
to go on also. Another will grasp at 
him, and so on, until the negro leads a 
straggling line of ten or a dozen tipsy 
monkeys. When finally brought to 
the village, they are securely caged 
and sobered down; but for two or three 
days a gradually diminishing supply of 
liquor is given them, so as to reconcile 
them by degrees to their state of cap¬ 
tivity. 


CURIOUS FACTS ABOUT TOOLS. 

Every mechanic knows that old 
tools, which have been laid aside or lost 
for a long time, seem to have acquired 
additional excellence of quality. Ra¬ 
zors, which have lost their keenness 
mid their temper, recover, like man¬ 
kind, v ien given time to recuperate. 
A spring regains its tension vhen 
allowed to rest. Farmers leave their 













480 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


scythes exposed to the weather, some¬ 
times from one season to another, and 
find their quality improved by it. 
Boiler makers frequently search old 
boilers carefully, when reopened for 
repairs after a long period of service, to 
find any tools that may have been left 
in them when last repaired, and if 
they are found, they are almost invari¬ 
ably of unusually fine quality. 


HEIGHT OF TOWERS, ETC. 

The altitude of the principal towers, 
spires, monuments, etc., is as follows, 


reckoned in feet: 

Bunker Hill Monument.221 

Leaning Tower of Pisa.190 

Milan Cathedral.260 

Mosque of St. Sophia, Constantinople 290 

Porcelain Tower at Nankin.228 

Pyramids of Egypt (highest).520 

Salisbury Spire.410 

Solomon’s Temple.210 

St. Ivan’s Tower.300 

St. Paul’s Church, London.370 

St. Peter’s Church, Rome.518 

Strasburg Cathedral.474 

Temple of Belus, at Babylon.666 

Tower of Babel.680 

Trinity Church, New York.283 

Walls of Babylon.350 


FURNITURE STUFFS. 

Carpets, velvets, damasks, reps, pop¬ 
lins, printed linens and cottons, linen 
and plain silks, damask silk and silk 
and woolen damasks, brocatelles, fig¬ 
ured and embroidered muslins and 
laces, fringes, are so many specialties 
in furnishing stuffs. Until very mod¬ 
ern times, says the Draper , the mate¬ 
rials to choose from were very limited, 
some of them unsuited to our climate. 
The introduction and application of 
reps, with silk and woolen damasks of 
variegated surface, indicated the first 
great modern advance. Algerines and 
woolen reps proceeded to replace, little 
by little, the figured velvets and the 
cloths printed with medallions, which 


had constituted the favorite furnishing 
stuffs; whilst for curtains, beautiful 
embroidered muslins were substituted 
for cottons with printed borders. 

It was this country that brought 
out moreen (1839), consisting of wool 
with watered or clouded ground, dam¬ 
ask wool, and damask wool and cotton. 
Twelve years later witnessed the pro¬ 
duction of double-faced reps. Since 
1862, woolen poplins have replaced 
those composed of woolen warp and 
cotton train. A great proportion of 
these goods are machine-made. At 
the present time, furniture silk and 
woolen poplins, chiefly made by hand* 
are used to a considerable extent. 

The beauty of brocaded silks and 
satins, now so extensivelv introduced 
as coverings and curtains, consists in 
style and finish as well as in material; 
the patterns of various devices, princi¬ 
pally flowers, being raised upon the 
surface, so as to have the appearance 
of being worked by hand; some of 
these are even worked in gold and sil¬ 
ver. In the selection of silk mercery, 
now supplied for upholstery in multi¬ 
tudinous qualities, shades and colors, 
not only should the general texture of 
the article, its regularity of make, sel¬ 
vage, and weight be taken into consid¬ 
eration, but the liability or otherwise to 
be effected by sunlight, atmospheric 
influences or gaseous vapors. We 
need not say that however supple the 
material and beautiful the surface, its 
early fading or deterioration from 
these causes cannot fail to give dissat¬ 
isfaction to the purchaser, who is too 
apt to lay the blame on the draper. 
In short, all upholstery stuffs require 
great care in selection. 

The points of recommendation of 
silk warp and worsted weft fabrics for 
furniture, are their richness and dura¬ 
bility. It is in the production of arti- 

























THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


481 


cles in which wool of various kinds 
is combined with cotton and silk, that 
the superiority of British manufact¬ 
urers is most apparent. In these, the 
skill and enterprise of the manufact¬ 
urer have been aided by the dyer. The 
chemical processes required to impart 
an equable and regular dye to a fabric 
composed of both animal and vegetable 
substances, are necessarily varied and 
intricate, but they are dyed as success¬ 
fully as silk alone. Witness the Dub¬ 
lin poplins, ever, by the way, coming 
out with new shades. The remarkable 
softness to the touch, which distin¬ 
guishes velvet, due to the pile occa¬ 
sioned by the short pieces of silk thread 
doubled under the shoot, and the at¬ 
tractive appearance of the surface 
reflecting different shades according to 
position, owing to the uniformity and 
evenness of the pile, render it an 
attractive article. Figured velvet for 
hangings and furniture, if of tasteful 
design and good breadth, is calculated 
to show to good advantage. We have 
seen beautiful imitations of white lace 
on velvet grounds in several varieties. 

The savonnerie velvets, made by 
machine, must be added to the list of 
varied furnishing stuffs. 

The use of pure woolen stuffs for 
upholstery, tends to diminish both in 
this and other European countries, but 
large quantities are exported to South 
America and the colonies. The more 
costly specimens of printed cretonnes 
are chiefly manufactured in France 
and Germany. Those of Alsace, fa¬ 
mous for their excellence, are in much 
request, not only for coverings but 
screens. The rich continental tissues 
present, with the most delicate surface, 
most skillful combinations of color, 
brilliant hues in flowers, birds, butter¬ 
flies, and other devices on which the 
eye can rest without weariness from 


the repose induced by the harmony of 
the tint. In no tissues has more skill 
been exhibited on the part of the de¬ 
signer and dyer. Piece dyed and 
printed table covers of wool, and silk 
combined with wool, have necessarily 
a large sale; but what strikes us as 
according with a higher degree of 
taste, when the purpose is merely dec¬ 
oration, is the embroidery of plain 
covers at the corners with colored 
silks. No textile furniture article, if 
we except curtains, shows to better 
advantage, if rich and appropriate, 
than a table cover. A considerable 
continental supply of those we refer 
to, is always on hand among London 
warehousemen. Fancy linen damask 
for covering furniture, contribute to 
the serviceable varieties of tissues 
available for the same purpose. We 
have inspected specimens of these 
made in close imitation of silk. In 
the finer descriptions, much skill is 
displayed. We may properly include 
under our heading, damask linen table 
cloths and napkins, the sale of which 
depends on quality far more than de¬ 
sign. As it is important for a draper 
dealing in what are known as embroid¬ 
ered lace curtains, to be technically 
correct in his designations, we may 
mention that the term embroidery is 
not much used in connection with the 
Nottingham lace trade, the handwork 
applied being in the working round of 
the outline, which is called “running,” 
and in the filling up of the interior 
parts, which is termed either “ fining ” 
or “open working.” Owing to the 
cheapness of labor in Switzerland, the 
Swiss are enabled to place upon our 
own and other foreign markets, at 
moderate prices, real hand-embroidered 
curtains. 

In embroidered coverings of cush¬ 
ions, whether trailed over or wreathed 





482 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


round with twigs, leaves, flowers, or 
otherwise adorned, care should be taken 
in purchasing stock that those chosen 
do not present rough broad welts. 
Rich and heavy embroidery frequently 
unfits the stuffs on which it is worked 
for ordinary use; what will commonly 
be found most pleasing, if embroidery 
be demanded for cushion surfaces, 
are corners prettily sprinkled with 
lively-looking flowers. 

Moreens for window-curtains and bed- 
furniture might be more extensively 
disposed of if the practice of uphol¬ 
sterers was followed. As colors and 
patterns are much a matter of change¬ 
able taste, and as in respect to uphol¬ 
stery stuff there is not usually that 
haste for filling an order which attends 
on dress goods, it would be well if in 
addition to a choice current stock, 
inclusive of such as are adapted to 
ladies dresses, the drapers were ready 
to submit a series of book-patterns of 
hues and shades readily obtainable 
from the London warehousemen. 
These might be presented, too, in com¬ 
bination with fringes or traced 
embroidery, judiciously selected. Of 
colored mixed stuffs their chief appli¬ 
cation in the department of which we 
are treating, is for window curtains. 
Many makers turn them out for this 
purpose with great brilliancy and force 
of color. We have seen of late years 
a great advance in beauty and appro¬ 
priateness of design and excellence of 
manufacture. 

A large business is done by many 
retail drapers in furniture fringes. In 
addition to the well known varieties of 
plain head, open head, star head, loop 
bullion, country and town bullion, 
German cotton fringe, and cotton and 
worsted bullion, choice novelties are 
constantly being introduced in London, 
especially from the continent. The 


same may be said of silk and worsted 
chair gimps, curtain-holders, bell-pulls, 
and float and orris laces. 

As guiding to a judicious selection of 
carpets for stock, so far as patterns are 
concerned, we may observe that there 
should be a contrast between the cen¬ 
tre of a carpet and its border, a con¬ 
trast obtained not only by a border 
darker than the body of the carpet, 
but also by ornamental details smaller 
and more closely treated, and with 
greater fullness of color than the 
design of their central portion. Such 
a treatment may be reversed, and the 
details of the centre be smaller than 
those of the body and its color lighter, 
or variety may be obtained by other 
methods, but where there is no such 
contrast the result is indistinctness 
and want of piquancy. Cocoa and 
manilla hemp matting, plain and 
printed felts, and oilcloths, have a 
large consumption, and should not be 
overlooked by the retail draper possess¬ 
ing ample storeroom. Oilcloths are 
made so perfect as to occasion no 
inconvenience from the most prolonged 
and intense heat. Various additional 
materials have been of late years intro¬ 
duced, such as cork matting, oriental 
fibers, and combinations of gutta¬ 
percha, allowing of any amount of 
ornamentation. 


TO DRIVE RATS AWAY WITHOUT 

POISON. 

There are three methods: First, the 
old French plan; this is followed chief¬ 
ly in Paris by men who make it a 
special business. They take a deep 
tub with water on the bottom, and a 
little elevation in the middle like an 
island, on which is only place for just 
one rat to sit on. The top is covered 
and has a large balanced valve, open- 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


483 


ing downward; on the middle of this 
valve, a piece of fried pork or cheese is 
fixed, and when a rat walks on it to get 
the cheese, the valve goes down, drops 
the rat in the water, and moves back 
in position. A road is made from a 
rat-hole to the top of the tub, by 
means of a piece of board rubbed with 
cheese, so as to make the walk attrac¬ 
tive for the rats. In the course of a 
single night, some ten, twenty, or 
even more rats may go down, and if 
the island was not there, they would 
be found most all alive in the morn¬ 
ing quietly swimming round; but the 
provision of the little island saves the 
trouble of killing them, because their 
egotistic instinct of self-preservation 
causes them to fight for the exclusive 
possession of the island, on which, in 
the morning, the strongest rat is 
found in solitary possession; all the 
others being killed and drowned around 
him. Second, the New York plan, 
invented by one of our friends. The 
floor near the rat hole is covered with 
a thin layer of moist caustic potassa. 
When the rats walk on this, it makes 
their feet sore; these they lick with 
their tongues, which makes the mouth 
sore; and the result is that they shun 
this locality, not alone, but appear to 
tell all the rats in the neighborhood 
about it, and eventually, the house is 
entirely abandoned by them, notwith¬ 
standing the houses around may be 
teeming with rats. Third, the Dutch 
method; this is said to be used success¬ 
fully in Holland; we have, however, 
never tried it. A number of rats are 
left together to themselves in a 
very large trap or cage, with no food 
whatever; their craving hunger will 
cause them to fight, and the weakest 
will be eaten by the strongest. After 
a short time the fight is renewed, and 
the next weakest is the victim, and so 


it goes on till one strong rat is left. 
When this one has eaten the last re¬ 
mains of any of the others, it is set 
loose; the animal has now acquired 
such a taste for rat-flesh, that he is the 
terror of ratdom, going round seek¬ 
ing what rat he may devour. In 
an incredibly short time the premises 
are abandoned by all other rats, which 
will not come back before the cannibal 
rat has left or has died. 


MEN OF LITERARY GENIUS. 

Tasso’s conversation was neither 
gay nor brilliant. Dante was neither 
taciturn nor satirical. Butler was 
sullen or biting. Gray seldom talked 
or smiled. Hogarth and Smith were 
very absent minded in company. 
Milton was very unsociable, and even 
irritable when pressed into conversa¬ 
tion. Kirwan, though copious and 
eloquent in public addresses, was mea¬ 
ger and dull in colloquial discourse. 
Virgil was heavy in conversation. 
La Fontaine appeared heavy, coarse 
and stupid; he could not speak and 
describe what he had just seen, but then 
he was the model of poetry. Chau¬ 
cer’s silence was more agreeable than 
his conversation. Dryden’s conversa¬ 
tion was slow and dull, his humor 
saturine and reserved. Corneille, in 
conversation, was so insipid that he 
never failed in wearying; he did not 
even speak correctly that language of 
which he was such a master. Ben. 
Johnson used to sit silent in company 
and suck his wine and their humors. 
Southey was stiff, sedate and wrapped 
up in aceticism. Addison was good 
company with his intimate friends, 
but in mixed company he preserved 
his dignity by a stiff and reserved 
silence. Fox, in conversation never 
flagged, his animation and variety 









484 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


were inexhaustible. Dr. Bently was 
loquacious, so also was Grotius. Gold¬ 
smith u wrote like an angel and talked 
like poor Poll.'” Burke was entertain¬ 
ing, enthusiastic and interesting in 
conversation. Curran was a convival 
deity. 


POTTING PLANTS. 

The mould for potting should be 
light and loamy, the fertilizing mate¬ 
rial used being well decayed. If the 
soil is rich of itself, it is better to be 
either very sparing with the fertilizer 
or to dispense with it altogether. 
In the bottom of the pot, place several 
small, broken pieces of crockery, or 
similar material, to assist the drainage; 
and in setting the plant, be careful to 
keep it well down in the pot and to 
press the mold moderately around the 
roots. The surface of the mold should 
be about half an inch below the level 
of the top of the flower pot. Slips 
should be planted close to the sides of 
the pot, and in small pots. 

When a plant becomes pot bound, 
that is, when the roots have become 
matted around the sides and bottom 
of the pot, the plant, as soon as it has 
ceased blooming, should be repotted in 
a larger pot. It is not necessary to 
remove any of the mold from the roots, 
but simply to fill in the space in the 
larger pot with new and rich mold. 

Plants kept in the windows should 
be turned every morning, or the light, 
striking on one side only, will draw 
the plant to that side, so that all its 
branches and leaves will turn towards 
the window. The water in the saucers 
should never be applied to the plants. 
In cutting slips of any plant, always 
choose the youngest branches; and 
cut ofi* the slip at the junction of a 
joint or leaf, since the roots shoot 


more readily from such joints. If you 
follow these directions and put suffi¬ 
cient sulphate of ammonia to just taint 
the water applied to your plants, you 
may cultivate with success almost any 
plant, even though you are an entire 
novice. 


SHRINKING OF SEASONED TIMBER. 

The various kinds of oak, and some 
other kinds of valuable timber, will 
shrink more or less every time the 
surface is dressed off even a small frac¬ 
tion of an inch. Wheelwrights, ac¬ 
customed to work in oak, are well 
aware of this fact, and a correct appre¬ 
ciation of it often enables them to 
turn out work of a superior character, 
even of ordinary materials, by first 
blocking out the pieces roughly, then 
allowing the timber to season, and 
afterwards working the various parts 
by degrees, as the' seasoning process 
becomes more and more complete. 
White oak spoke timber, for example, 
may be allowed to remain in rough 
state for half a score of years, under 
shelter, without becoming seasoned 
so thoroughly that the timber will 
not shrink after the spokes have been 
dressed out. 

Carriage wheels have often been 
made of the choicest quality of oak 
timber after every spoke had been 
seasoned for several years, and, to the 
great surprise of the wheelwright, every 
spoke would work in the joints before 
the vehicle had run three months. 
The defect in such instances could 
not be attributed to inferior timber, 
nor to perfunctory workmanship; but 
simply to this one circumstance — that 
the parts of the wheels were put to¬ 
gether before the timber had ceased to 
shrink. 

To prove that the best quality of 











THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


485 


oak will shrink, after a spoke has been 
dressed out,.let a tenon be made on 
one end, and be driven immediately 
into a mortise; after a few days 1 expos¬ 
ure in a warm workshop, the spoke 
may be withdrawn with little diffi¬ 
culty. The same fact will hold good 
in the manufacture of woodwork of 
any kind where oak is employed for 
tenons. In order to make joints that 
will never start, the piece on which 
the tenons are to be made should be 
dressed over several times, until the 
shrinkage has ceased. Then let the 
tenons be made. After these have 
shrunk, while exposed to the drying 
influence of a warm workshop, the 
spokes, or other parts, may be driven 
into their respective places, with the 
assurance (especially if they are dipped 
in oil-paint previous to driving) that 
the timber will shrink no more. 

Many kinds of farming implements, 
in the manufacture of which, oak and 
ash are employed, render very unsatisfac¬ 
tory service, simply because the sea¬ 
soned timber was not allowed to shrink 
before the tenons were driven into the 
mortises. In like manner, oak chairs, 
and other oak furniture, will frequently 
shrink to such an extent that the 
pommels, rungs, dowel pins and banis¬ 
ters will all work loose, if the precau¬ 
tion we have described is not observed. 

A Dog's Bed. —The best bed which 
can be made for a dog, consists of dry 
newly-made deal shavings; a sackful 
of these may be had at almost any 
carpenters shop. The dog is delighted 
in tumbling about in them until he 
has made a bed to suit himself. Clean 
wood shavings will clean a dog as well 
as water, and fleas will never infest 
dogs that sleep upon fresh deal shav¬ 
ings. The turpentine and resin or 
new pine soon drive them away. 


PROPORTIONATE PROPERTIES OF 

FOOD. 


100 parts 

Water, 

Muscle 

Heat Fat 

of each. 
Apples. 

etc. 

making. 

5.0 

making. 

10.0 

Barley. 


15.0 

68.8 

Beans. 


24.0 

57.7 

Beef.. 


15.0 

30.0 

Buckwheat...., 


8.6 

75.4 

Butter. 



all 

Cabbage. 

...90.0 

4.6 

5.0 

Cheese. 

...10.0 

65.0 

19.0 

Chicken. 

...46.0 

18.0 

32 0 

Corn. 


12.0 

73.0 

Cucumbers. 

..97.0 

1.5 

1.0 

Eggs, white of 

...53.0 

17.0 

none 

Eggs, yolk of. . 

..79.0 

15.0 

27.0 

Lamb. 


11.0 

35.0 

Milk, cows.... 

...86.0 

5.0 

8.0 

Mutton. 


12.5 

40.0 

Oats.. 


17.0 

66.4 

Peas. 


23.4 

60.0 

Pork. 

. .38.5 

10.0 

50.0 

Potatoes. 


1.4 

22.5 

Rice. 


6.5 

79.5 

Turnips. 

..94.4 

1.1 

4.0 

Veal. 


10.1 

16.5 

Wheat. 


14.6 

69.4 


EARLY METALLURGY. 


Iron was not in common use till 
long after the introduction of copper. 
It is far more difficult to procure, be¬ 
cause it is not met with in the native 
state, and the fusing point is very 
high. The metallurgy of iron is more 
complex than that of copper, and 
when obtained, it is a more difficult 
metal to work. According to Xeno¬ 
phon, the melting of iron ore was first 
practiced by the Chalubes, a nation 
dwelling near the Black Sea, hence 
the name dialups , used for steel, and 
hence our word chalybeate, applied 
to a mineral water containing iron. 
Steel was known to the ancients, but 
we do not know by what means it was 
prepared; it was tempered by heating 
to redness, and plunging in cold 
water. According to some kuanos , 
mentioned by Homer, was steel; but 
Mr. Gladstone prefers to conclude that 
it was bronze. Iron was known at 
least 537 b. c. It was coined into 
money by the Lacedaemonians, and in 
the time of Lukeourgos was in com¬ 
mon use. It was used in the time of 
Homer for certain cutting instruments, 































486 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


such as woodman’s axes, and for plow¬ 
shares. Its value is shown by the 
fact that Achilles proposed a ball of 
iron as a prize for the games in honor 
of Patroklos. Neither iron, money 
nor iron implements of great antiquity 
have been found, because, unlike the 
other metals of which we have spoken 
above, iron rusts rapidly, and compara¬ 
tively soon disappears. No remains 
of it have been found in Egypt, yet 
Herodotus tells us that iron instru¬ 
ments were used in building the pyra¬ 
mids; moreover, steel must have been 
employed to engrave the granite and 
other hard rocks, massive pillars of 
which are often found engraved most 
delicately from top to bottom with 
hierogl} T phics. Again, the beautifully 
engraved Babylonian cylinders and 
Egyptian gems, frequently of corne¬ 
lian and onyx, must have required 
steel tools of the finest temper. We 
have no record of the furnaces in 
which iron ore was smelted, but we 
know that bellows were in use in the 
fifteenth century b. a, in Egypt, and 
some crucibles of the same period are 
preserved in the Berlin Museum. They 
closely resemble the crucibles in use at 
the present day. The native Indians 
prepare iron from hematite at the 
present time by equally primitive bel¬ 
lows, which indeed resemble the above 
very closely, and which, without doubt, 
have been unaltered for centuries. A 
small furnace is rapidly constructed of 
clay, and into the bottom of this, two 
nozzles are introduced; these are con¬ 
nected with the bellows by bamboo 
tubes. The bellows consist of cup¬ 
shaped bowls of wood, covered with 
goat skin above, and connected with 
the bamboo below. In the center of 
the goat skin cover a round hole is cut; 
the blower places his heel upon this, 
which is thus closed, while, at the same 


time, the skin is depressed, and a blast 
is driven from the tube; then he steps 
upon the second skin, and thus a con¬ 
tinual blast is kept up. The bent 
bamboo and string is for the purpose 
of raising the goat skin cover of the 
bellows after depression, which is 
accomplished by the Egyptian bellows 
by a string raised by the hand. A 
piece of hematite is introduced with 
some charcoal, and after the lapse of 
some time, it is reduced by the car¬ 
bonic oxide to a spongy mass of iron. 
Undoubtedly a crude furnace and ap¬ 
pliance of this nature was used by the 
first melters of iron. 


CONSERVE OF ROSE LEAVES. 

Gather the leaves of any sweet- 
scented, fresh, full-blown roses, early 
in the morning, while the dew is 
still upon them. Have ready provided, 
equal quantities of cloves, mace and 
nutmeg. Sprinkle with salt, then with 
the spices prepared. Take a box of 
any kind that is rather shallow, place 
in the bottom a layer of rose leaves, 
sprinkle with salt, then with the spices 
prepared; then put in another layer of 
rose leaves, then spices, etc., until the 
box is filled. Lastly, tie on tightly a 
cover of sheer Swiss muslin, and ex¬ 
pose to the sun daily until perfectly 
dry. You may then pack the con¬ 
serve in pretty china bottles, with 
wide mouths but close stoppers, 
and you will be provided with a 
delicious perfume, whose sweetness 
will not evaporate for years. It is 
pleasant either to have on one’s parlor 
mantel or chamber toilette table. As 
a perfume for mouchoir cases or scent 
bags it is unrivaled. Let the house¬ 
keeper also try laying it among the 
stores on the shelves of her linen 
closet. 







487 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


JOHN ERICSSON. 

John Ericsson, an eminent Swedish 
engineer, inventor of the caloric engine, 
was born in the province of Verme- 
land in 1803. After he had served sev¬ 
eral years in the army, he removed to 
England about 1826 and made un¬ 
successful experiments with an engine 
which he proposed to run without 
steam. He produced in 1829 a locomo¬ 
tive which ran fifty miles an hour on 
the Manchester Railway. About 1833 
he exhibited in England a caloric 
engine which attracted much attention 
among scientific men. He also in¬ 
vented the important application of the 
screw or propeller to steam navigation, 
and about 1840 came to the United 
States where he received aid from 
government in reducing his inventions 
to practice. He built the iron-clad 
steamer Monitor, which successfully 
opposed the Merrimac in Hampton 
Roads, March 9th, 1862. 


ELI WHITNEY. 

Eli Whitney, the inventor of the 
cotton-gin, was born at Westborough, 
Worcester county, Mass., Dec. 8th, 
1765. He displayed great mechanical 
ingenuity in his early youth, graduated 
at Yale College in 1792 and went to 
Georgia to teach school. He became 
an inmate in the household of General 
Greene’s widow, near Savannah, where 
about the end of 1792 he invented the 
cotton-gin for separating the cotton 
from the seed. In May, 1793, he 
formed with Phineas Miller a partner¬ 
ship for the manufacture of the gins. 
Before he had obtained a patent for his 
invention, some persons broke open his 
premises by night and canned off his 
model machine. He was thus defrauded 
of his just reward and was involved 


in much trouble by the infringements 
of his patent. When he prosecuted 
those who infringed his patent, the 
juries of Georgia decided for the 
defendants. The Legislature of South 
Carolina paid him fifty thousand dol¬ 
lars for his patent right about 1804. 
Despairing of gaining a competence by 
this invention, he engaged in the 
manufacture of fire-arms near Hew 
Haven in 1798. He made great im¬ 
provements in the construction of fire¬ 
arms and acquired an independent 
fortune in that business. He married 
in 1817, a daughter of Judge Pierpont 
Edwards. 

Robert Fulton expressed the opinion 
that Arkwright, Watt, and Whitney 
were the three men that did most for 
mankind of any of their contempora¬ 
ries. He died at New Haven in Janu¬ 
ary, 1825. 


BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 

This eminent American philosopher 
and statesman was born at Boston, 
Mass., January 17th, 1706. He was 
the youngest son and fifteenth child 
of a family of seventeen . children. 
His father, Josiah Franklin, emi¬ 
grated from England to America 
in 1682. He followed the busi¬ 
ness of tallow-chandler and soap¬ 
boiler. Benjamin when only ten years 
old was employed in his father’s shop 
in cutting wicks, going errands, etc.; 
but soon becoming disgusted with the 
monotonous routine of his duties he 
conceived a strong desire to go to sea. 
To prevent this his father bound him 
apprentice to his brother James, who 
was a printer. He now had free 
access to books for which he had 
evinced a fondness, even from infancy. 
He himself says he could not remem¬ 
ber the time when he did not know; 











488 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


how to read. To gratify his thirst he 
would often sit up the greater part of 
the night. During his apprenticeship 
he made occasional anonymous contri¬ 
butions to a paper published by his 
brother, and ouce had the gratification 
to hear his articles warmly commended 
by some gentlemen who called at the 
office, and who little imagined him to 
be the author. He did not, however, 
neglect his duties as a printer, and he 
became in a few years well skilled in 
his trade; but he and his brother could 
not agree. At length, when seventeen 
years of age, young Franklin left 
Boston without the knowledge of his 
relatives, embarking in a vessel bound 
for New York, whence he proceeded 
partly by water and partly on foot to 
Philadelphia. Here he obtained em¬ 
ployment as a journeyman printer, 
tn the following year, encouraged by 
Hie promise of assistance from a 
gentleman in Philadelphia, he resolved 
to set up business for himself. With 
this view he went to England in order 
to purchase type and other materials 
necessary for carrying on the trade. 
But failing to receive the aid which he 
had expected from his pretended friend, 
he was obliged to work as a journey¬ 
man in London where he remained 
more than a year. He returned in 
1726 to Philadelphia, and in 1729, with 
the assistance of some friends, he estab¬ 
lished himself in business. The next 
year he married Miss Deborah Reed, 
with whom he had become acquainted 
in Philadelphia before he went to 
England. In 1729 he became the edi¬ 
tor and proprietor of a newspaper (the 
Pennsylvania Gazette) which his talent 
for writing soon rendered very popular 
and profitable. To him is due the 
credit of founding the Philadelphia 
Library which was commenced in 1731 
and is now one of the largest in the 


United States. By his talents, pru¬ 
dence and 'integrity, lie continued to 
rise in the estimation of the commu¬ 
nity in which he lived until he was 
deemed worthy of the highest honors 
which his country could bestow. In 
1752 he made the important and 
brilliant discovery of the identity of 
lightning with the electric fluid by 
means of a kite. Some letters, giving 
an account of his first experiment, 
were sent to England to his friend, Mr. 
Collinson, who had them read before 
the Royal Society; but they attracted 
little attention. One paper, says 
Franklin in his autobiography, which 
I wrote for Mr. Kinnessley on the 
sameness of lightning with electricity, 
was laughed at by the connoisseurs. 
These papers were not even thought 
worthy to be printed in the Transac¬ 
tions of the Society. At the sugges¬ 
tion of Dr. Tothergill they were 
published in a pamphlet by themselves. 
A copy having fallen under the notice 
of the celebrated Count de Buffon, it 
was at his instance translated into 
French and excited great attention on 
the continent. The subject was 
brought again before the notice of 
the Royal Society, “and they soon 
made me,” says Franklin, “ more than 
amends for the slight with which they 
had before treated me.” Without wait¬ 
ing for any application to be made on 
his behalf, they chose him a member 
of their body and voted that he should 
be excused from the customary pay¬ 
ments on admission (amounting to 
twenty-five guineas); they also be¬ 
stowed upon him the Copley gold 
medal (dated 1753) and afterwards 
furnished him with their transactions 
without charge. Before he left Eng¬ 
land in 1762 the degree of Doctor of 
Laws was conferred upon him by the 
Universities of Edinburgh and OxfW. 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


489 


Towards the close of 1776 he was sent 
as ambassador to the court of France. 
He arrived in Paris on the 21st of 
December. To Franklin is due the prin¬ 
cipal, if not the sole, credit of effecting 
between France and the United States 
the Treaty of Alliance, the stipulations 
of which were so eminently favorable 
to the latter country. This treaty, 
signed at Paris the 6th of February, 
1778, may be said to have secured the 
independence of the American colonies. 
He died in Philadelphia, on the 17th 
of April, 1790, aged eighty-four years. 
His remains are entombed in the 
cemetery of Christ Church burying- 
ground at the corner of Fifth and Arch 
streets. Dr. Franklin says in his will, 
u I wish to be buried by the side of my 
wife if it may be, and that a marble 
stone be made by Chambers, six feet 
long , four feet wide, plain, with only a 
small moulding round the upper edge 
and this inscription: Benjamin and 
Deborah Franklin 1790, to be placed 
over us both.” Strictly, to the letter 
this will was carried out, and there 
repose the ashes of this great man. 
There is, somehow, a majesty in a 
modest epitaph, that sounding titles 
and classic quotations cannot attain. 


ARKWRIGHT. 

Sir Richard Arkwright was an 
inventor whose ingenuity contributed 
greatly to the prosperity of Great 
Britain. He was born at Preston, 
Lancashire, in 1732, and was a barber 
in his youth. He is the reputed 
inventor of a machine for spinning 
cotton which produced an immense 
extension of the cotton manufacture in 
the British empire. He set up the 
machine at Preston in 1768 and ob¬ 
tained a patent for it in 1769, about 
which date he formed a partnership 


with Need and Strutt of Nottingham. 
In 1771 they built a spinning-mill on 
the Derwent at Cromford, which was 
moved by water-power; this enterprise 
was very successful. He became the 
proprietor of other cotton-mills and 
controlled the market of cotton yarn 
for some years. His fight to the 
patent was contested and a verdict was 
given against him in 1781; but his 
business continued to prosper. Ark¬ 
wright is celebrated not only as an 
ingenious inventor, but also as the 
founder or pioneer of the factory 
system. He was a man of wonderful 
energy and perseverance. He was 
knighted by George III in 1786. 
Died in 1792, leaving a large and val¬ 
uable estate. 


ELIAS HOWE. 

Elias Howe was born at Spencer, 
Mass., about 1819. While employed 
as a machinist he made many experi¬ 
ments fqr the invention of a sewing- 
machine and about 1844 entered into a 
partnership with Mr. George Fisher, of 
Cambridge, Mass., who agreed to give 
him pecuniary assistance on condition 
of becoming proprietor of half the 
patent. In April, 1845, he finished a 
machine which in esssential points is 
esteemed by competent judges equal to 
any that have succeeded it. He ob¬ 
tained a patent in 1846. His invention 
not meeting in the United States with 
the success which he had anticipated, 
he resolved to visit England. He 
resided several years in London in 
great destitution and returned in 1849 
without having succeeded in making 
known the merits of his invention. 
Meanwhile the sewing-machine had 
been brought into general notice and 
favor, various improvements having 
been added by Isaac Singer. Howe 










490 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


instituted a law-suit which was decided 
in his favor in 1854. One of the most 
important of Mr. Howe’s patents was 
for the eye in the point of the needle. 
The royalty for this patent alone 
which was paid Mr. Howe from other 
manufacturers was a princely sum. 
Soon after the breaking out of the 
rebellion in 1861, Mr. Howe raised and 
equipped at his own expense a regi¬ 
ment, in which he served as a private, 
until ill health compelled him to 
resign. 


SIR HUMPHREY DAYY. 

Sir Humphrey Davy who was one 
of the most eminent chemists that 
Great Britain has produced, was born 
at Penzance, in Cornwall, December 17, 
1778. His father was a carver of wood. 
Endowed by nature with an ardent 
and fertile imagination, he early mani¬ 
fested a decided taste for works of 
fiction and especially for poetry. It is 
stated that when about eleven years 
old he commenced an epic poem of 
which Diomede, the son of Tydeus, was 
the hero. When he was sixteen (1795), 
he lost his father. Not long after, 
Gregory Watt, son of the celebrated 
James Watt, visiting the west of Eng¬ 
land for his health, became a lodger in 
the house of Mrs. Davy, the mother of 
Humphrey. A warm friendship, the 
result of congenial tastes, sprang up 
between the young men and appears 
to have had an important influence in 
directing the studies and determining 
the subsequent career of Davy. In 
1798 he became associated with Dr. 
Beddoes in the Pneumatic Institution 
which the latter had founded at Bristol. 
In the following year the young chem¬ 
ist gave to the world his first contribu¬ 
tions to science, viz: ‘Essays on Heat 
and Light,’ with a ‘ New Theory of 


Respiration,’ etc., (these essays form¬ 
ing part of a volume published by Dr. 
Beddoes). His Researches, Chemical 
and Philosophical, chiefly concerning 
nitrous oxide and its respiration, 
appeared in 1800, and attracted great 
attention in the scientific world. He 
was the first to discover and make 
known the peculiar properties of 
nitrous oxide gas. In 1801 he gave 
his first lecture before the Royal 
Institution (London) in which he was 
the following year appointed professor. 
As a lecturer he was eminently suc¬ 
cessful. It is said that after his sudden 
rise to distinction he occasionally 
betrayed a spirit of arrogance towards 
younger aspirants to fame. In 1812 
Davy was knighted, and shortly after¬ 
wards he married Mrs. Apreece — a 
widow, who possessed, with many ac¬ 
complishments, a considerable fortune. 
He was made, in 1818, a baronet, in con¬ 
sideration of the great services which he 
had rendered his country and mankind 
—among which one of the most 
important was his invention of the 
safety-lamp. In 1820 he was chosen 
president of the Royal Society and for 
seven successive years was elected to 
the same office—which, however, in 
1827, he was compelled to resign on 
account of his health. He died at 
Geneva in May, 1829. 


PETER COOPER. 

Peter Cooper was born in the city of 
New York, Feb. 12, 1791. His father 
was a lieutenant in the war of the 
Revolution, after the close of which he 
established a hat manufactory, in 
which his youthful son Peter aided to 
the extent of his strength. During 
his youth, his father’s undertakings 
being attended with little success, 
Peter had to work very hard. He 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


491 


attended school only half of each day 
for more than a year, and beyond the 
humble knowledge thus gained, his 
acquisitions are all his own. At the 
age of seventeen he was placed with 
John Woodward to learn coachmak¬ 
ing, and served out his apprenticeship 
so much to the satisfaction of his 
master, that he offered to set him up 
in business, which Mr. Cooper declined. 
He successfully followed his trade; and 
subsequently the manufacture of pat¬ 
ent machines for shearing cloth, which 
were in great demand during the war 
of 1812; the manufacture of cabinet 
ware; the grocery business in the city 
of New York, and finally engaged in 
the manufacture of glue and isinglass, 
which he has carried on for more than 
thirty years. Mr. Cooper’s attention 
was early called to the great resources 
of this country for the manufacture of 
iron, and in 1830 he erected extensive 
works at Canton, near Baltimore. He 
erected subsequently a rolling and wire 
mill in the city of New York, in which 
he first successfully applied anthracite 
to the puddling of iron. In 1845, he 
removed the machinery to Trenton, N. 
J., and erected the largest rolling mill 
then in the United States, for the 
purpose of manufacturing railroad 
iron, and at which, subsequently, he 
was the first to roll wrought iron 
beams for fire-proof buildings. While 
in Baltimore, Mr. Cooper built after 
his own designs the first locomotive 
engine that was turned out on this 
continent, and it was operated success¬ 
fully on the Baltimore and Ohio Rail¬ 
road, thus identifying his name with 
the early history of railroads. Having 
taken great interest also in the 
extension of the electric telegraph, he 
was chosen President of the New York, 
Newfoundland and London Telegraph 
Company. Mr. Cooper was one of the 


earliest and most persistent advocates 
of the present free school system, but 
finding that no common school system 
could supply a technological education, 
he determined to establish in his na- 
I tive city an institution in which the 
working classes could secure that in- 
} struction for which he, when young 
and ambitious, sought in vain. Ac¬ 
cordingly, the “Union for the Ad¬ 
vancement of Science and Art,” 
commonly called the Cooper Institute, 
was erected in New York City; which 
building covers an entire block and 
cost over $500,000. This celebrated 
institution and its objects are familiar 
to our readers. 

As an inventor, Mr. Cooper is not 
generally known to the American 
public. Nevertheless, he possesses 
inventive talent of a high order. A 
recent summary of his inventions, 
published in the New York Herald , 
states that among his very earliest 
inventions was a self-rocking cradle. 
After he was married, and a cradle 
became one of the necessities of his 
household appointments, they were too 
poor to keep a servant, and the result 
was that he was called upon to rock 
the cradle with inconvenient frequen¬ 
cy. He therefore invented a self-rock¬ 
ing cradle, and not only that but a fan 
attachment to fan the infant and keep 
off the flies, and last, and not least 
important of all, a diminutive callio- 
pean arrangement to soothe with its 
sweet harmonies the infant to repose. 
He took out a patent for this and sold 
it to a Yankee. When a bo 3 r at home, 
he ripped up an old shoe and, discov¬ 
ering how it was made, soon made 
lasts and shoes for the family. He 
made a machine for grinding plate 
glass of any size to a perfect plane. 
During his apprenticeship he made a 
machine for making hubs of carriages 







492 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


similar to those now in use. Another 
of his inventions is a cylindrical ma- 
chine for puddling iron and for re¬ 
ducing ore and pig metal to wrought 
iron, an invention somebody else has 
just brought out in England, and is 
making a fortune from. Twenty-two 
years ago he filed a caveat and specifi¬ 
cations for this invention. There is, in 
fact, scarcely any end to his inventions. 
He also — as long ago as when an 
apprentice — invented a process of 
utilizing condensed air as a propelling 
power. At one of these experiments 
at Fulton ferry—that is, where Fulton 
ferry is now — the great Fulton, who 
made the first steamboat, was present, 
and expressed himself highly pleased 
with the result. Fifty-seven years ago 
he made a model of a mowing ma¬ 
chine, embracing the principle of 
mowing machines now in use. 

It was largely owing to his persever¬ 
ance, and readiness to risk his fortune 
that oceanic telegraphy was success¬ 
fully introduced. 


THOMAS BLANCHARD. 

Thomas Blanchard, who was the 
well known inventor of the lathe for 
turning irregular forms, was born in 
Sutton, Worcester county, Mass., June 
24, 1788. From a strong bias for 
mechanical employments, he joined 
his brother, who was engaged in the 
manufacture of tacks by hand, a very 
slow and tedious process, and at the 
age of eighteen commenced his inven¬ 
tion of a tack machine. It was six 
years before he could bring it to the 
desired perfection. Finally, so effec¬ 
tive was the machine, that by placing 
in the hopper the iron to be worked, 
and applying motive power, 500 tacks 
were made per minute, with better 
finished heads and points than had 


ever been made by hand. For this 
machine, Blanchard secured the patent 
and sold the right to a company for 
$5,000. About this time various at¬ 
tempts were made in several of the 
United States armories to turn musket 
barrels with a uniform external finish. 
Mr. Blanchard undertook the con¬ 
struction of a lathe to turn the whole 
of the barrel from end to end by the 
combination of one single self-direct¬ 
ing operation. He succeeded perfectly 
in his invention, and this remarkable 
machine, with modifications and im¬ 
provements, is in use in the national 
armories as well as in England; and in 
various forms is applied to many oper¬ 
ations in making musket stocks, such 
as cutting in the cavity for the lock, 
barrel, ramrod, butt plates, and 
mountings, comprising, together with 
the turning of the stock and barrel, no 
less than thirteen different machines. 
Mr. Blanchard was also interested at 
an early day in the construction of 
railroads and locomotives, and in boats 
so contrived as to ascend the rapids of 
the Connecticut, and rivers in the 
Western States. He has taken no less 
than twenty-four patents for different 
inventions. He died at Boston, April 
17, 1864. 


SAMUEL COLT. 

Col. Samuel Colt, was born at Hart¬ 
ford, Conn., July 19, 1814, and 

educated in his own native city. 
When a child he preferred the work¬ 
room to the school-room. He re¬ 
mained in his father’s factory from the 
age of ten to fourteen when he was 
sent to school at Amherst, Mass., but 
ran away from the school, and, in July, 
1829, shipped as a boy before the mast 
on an East India voyage. On his 
return, he served a short apprentice- 











403 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ship in a factory at Ware, Mass., in 
the dyeing and bleaching department, 
where he learned something; after 
which, under the assumed name of Dr. 
Coult, he traversed every State and 
most of the towns in the Union and 
British North America, lecturing on 
chemistry. In this way he earned 
considerable money, which he devoted 
to the prosecution of the invention of 
his revolver, the germ of which he had 
already devised while on his voyage to 
Calcutta. The first model of his pistol, 
made in wood, in 1829, while a sailor 
boy, is still in existence. At the age 
of twenty-one, he took out his first 
patent for revolving fire-arms. Before 
obtaining his patent here, he visited 
France and England and secured 
patents there. He returned to the 
United States and succeeded in in¬ 
ducing some New York capitalists to 
take an interest in the invention, and 
a company was formed in Paterson, N. 
J., in 1835, with a capital of $300,000 
under the name of the Patent Arms 
Company. The revolvers were first 
introduced into use in the Florida War 
of 1837. In 1842 the Patent Arms 
Company were forced to suspend. 
The Mexican War commencing in 
1847, General Taylor sent Captain 
Walker of the Texan Rangers to pro¬ 
cure a supply; there were no arms to 
be had, not even could he obtain one 
to serve as a model, so that he was 
compelled to make a new model, 
which he did with several improve¬ 
ments. The first thousand were made 
at Whitneyville, Conn. Other orders 
immediately following, Mr. Colt pro¬ 
cured more commodious workshops at 
Hartford, and commenced business on 
his own account. The demand for 
revolvers greatly increasing, and more 
room and greater facilities being re¬ 
quired, he purchased a tract of meadow 


land south of Mill River, within the 
limits of the city of Hartford, sur¬ 
rounded it with a dyke or embank¬ 
ment about two miles in length, one 
hundred and fifty feet at the base, 
from thirty to sixty at the top, and 
from ten to twenty-five feet in height. 
He erected within this his armory, 
consisting of two main buildings, with 
others for offices, warerooms, etc., in 
which armory he could manufacture 
one thousand fire-arms per day. He 
also manufactured the machinery for 
making these fire-arms elsewhere, and 
supplied -a large portion of the ma¬ 
chinery for the armory of the British 
Government at Enfield, England, and 
the whole of that for the Russian 
Government at Tula. The entire 
expenditure upon his grounds and 
buildings amounted to more than 
$1,000,000. He did not forget the 
comfort of his workmen, having good 
dwellings provided for them, besides a 
public hall, a library, courses of lec¬ 
tures, concerts, etc. Mr. Colt subse¬ 
quently invented a submarine battery 
of great power, and was one of the first 
to lay a submarine cable. He amassed 
an immense fortune in his manufact¬ 
ure of arms; and died in 1861. 


ISAAC MERRITT SINGER. 

This eminent mechanician died at 
his residence at Old Paignton, near 
Torquay, England, on the 23d day of 
July, 1875, in the sixty-fourth year of 
his age. It rarely happens that a 
great mechanical inventor perma¬ 
nently identifies his name with the 
useful inventions he gives to the 
world. The men of talent too often 
seize upon and carry off the fame 
which properly belongs to the men of 
genius. Still more rarely does it occur 
that the meritorious inventor secures 







494 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the pecuniary rewards which justly 
pertain to the highest efforts of the 
mind. 

The subject of this notice was so 
fortunate as to achieve, in both re- 

i 

spects, a grand success. His name 
and reputation will be perpetuated by 
a great manufacturing corporation, 
whose beneficial operations extend 
over the whole civilized world, and he 
died in the possession and enjoyment 
of a colossal fortune. His father was 
a German, a millwright by trade; his 
mother a native of Rensselaer county, 
New York, where the future inventor 
was born. At an early day the family 
removed to Oswego, but the father met 
with little success in his business, and 
the son, when about twelve years of 
age, with very imperfect school edu¬ 
cation and no money, departed from 
a home to which he never returned. 

From that time forth, he fought the 
battle of life alone. He soon turned 
his attention to mechanical work, and 
maintained himself as a machinist, but 
he never served any regular appren¬ 
ticeship, and never pretended to be an 
accomplished artisan. His mind nat¬ 
urally employed itself about novel 
means of reaching important results, 
and for many years, while engaged in 
inventions, it was his practice to 
employ the simplest materials, such as 
a steel wire bent to some peculiar 
shape, or a piece of sheet iron cut to 
some strange form, or a pine stick 
curiously whittled with a pocket knife, 
to elucidate the principles of some of 
the most useful and curious mechan¬ 
ical devices. The inventions being 
thus made, and the method of opera¬ 
tion distinctly shown, any skilled 
artisan readily put them into perma¬ 
nent form. At one time Mr. Singer 
was engaged in the employment of the 
Messrs. Hoe, in the city of New York, 


as a machinist, and then devoted his 
leisure hours to study for the stage. 
He enjoyed the acquaintance, and, to 
a limited extent, the instruction of 
Placide, Povey, Clarke and others, 
who then adorned the stage of the old 
Park theatre. 

During several years he was a theat¬ 
rical manager, and gave frequent 
representations of plays in the interior 
cities of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New 
York. In a certain line of characters, 
he is said to have acted with much 
success. To the close of his life he 
had an ardent love for theatricals and 
music, and in the splendid mansion, 
which he had built within the last few 
years, a theatre, complete in all its 
appointments, was included. 

While he was still a young man he 
invented a steam drilling machine, 
which was used with much advantage 
in the construction of various railways 
and canals. Subsequently he in¬ 
vented a machine for carving wood, 
metals, or marble. While endeavoring 
to introduce this invention to public 
notice and use, his attention was casu¬ 
ally directed to the sewing machine. 
At that time (A. D. 1850) though 
several patents on sewing devices had 
been granted in this and other coun¬ 
tries, no practical machine capable of 
profitable employment to do ordinary 
work had ever been produced. 

Up to that time sewing machines 
had been experimental merely and 
had failed to be useful. In eleven days 
the first Singer sewing machine was 
invented and built complete. It con¬ 
tained much that was new and useful. 
Subsequent improvements, for which 
numerous patents were obtained, 
added greatly to the value of this 
machine; but it was successful and 
profitable from the beginning to all 
concerned in it and established the 





495 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


reputation of the inventor and secured 
him a vast fortune. In 1860, Mr. 
Singer retired from the active manage¬ 
ment of business, and from that time 
until his death he resided mainly 
abroad. After several years 1 residence 
in Paris, he went, with his family, to 
England, and finally purchased an 
estate and settled down at Old Paign¬ 
ton, near Torquay, in Devonshire. 
The last years of his life were devoted 
to the improvement of that property, 
where he dispensed a liberal hospital¬ 
ity, and to the poor of that neighbor¬ 
hood his death will be a severe be¬ 
reavement. 


HENRY BURDEN. 

Inventor of the Horse-shoe Machine. 

Henry Burden, an inventor and 
mechanic, was born at Dunblane, Scot¬ 
land, April 20, 1791. His father was a 
farmer, and it was while a youth en¬ 
gaged on the faiyn that the son gave 
evidence of inventive genius, by mak¬ 
ing with his own hands labor-saving 
machinery from the roughest materials, 
and with but few tools and no models. 
The first marked success was in con¬ 
structing a threshing machine. He 
afterwards engaged in erecting grist¬ 
mills and making various farm 
implements. During this period he 
attended the school of William Haw¬ 
ley, an accomplished arithmetician; 
and afterwards, having resolved to try 
his fortunes in America as a machinist 
and inventor, he went to Edinburgh 
and entered upon a course of studies, 
embracing mathematics, engineering 
and drawing. Arriving in this country 
in 1819, he devoted himself to the 
improvement of agricultural imple¬ 
ments. His first effort was in making 
an improved plow, which took the 
first premium at three county fairs. 


In 1820 he invented the first cultivator 
in the country. In 1825 he received a 
patent for his machine for making the 
wrought spike and in 1835 for a 
machine for making horse-shoes. 1840 
he patented a machine for making the 
hook-headed spike, an article which is 
used on every railroad in the United 
States. In the same year he patented 
a self-acting machine for reducing iron 
into blooms after puddling. In 1843 
he patented an improvement in his 
horse-shoe machinery. In 1849, he 
patented a self-acting machine for roll¬ 
ing iron into bars. In June, 1857, he 
patented a new machine for making 
horse-shoes. This may be considered 
his greatest triumph in mechanics; it 
is self-acting and produces from the 
iron bars sixty shoes per minute. He 
has obtained patents for this machine 
from every prominent government in 
Europe. 


THOMAS PAINE. 

In the Surrogate’s office of the city 
of New York there are some curious 
old documents stowed away, among 
which is the last will and testament of 
Thomas Paine. This was recorded 
10th of June, 1809. More than half a 
century has elapsed since the spirit of 
that bold explorer of the realms of 
metaphysics passed the mystic domain 
where he must meet the proofs or 
refutation of his philosophy. The 
impression has generally prevailed 
that Thomas Paine was an Atheist. 
But his last will and testament is con¬ 
clusive evidence that such was not the 
case. A few extracts will establish the 
fact that he was an earnest believer in 
the existence of an Omnipotent Being, 
his Creator and his God. Thus says 
the will: 

“ Reposing confidence in my Creator, 











496 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


God, and in no other Being, for I know 
of no other, nor believe in any other, I, 
Thomas Paine, of the city of New York, 
author of the work entitled ‘ Common 
Sense,’ written in Philadelphia, in Jan- 
uary, 1776, which awakened America 
to a Declaration of Independence on 
the 4th of July following, which was, 
as fast as the work spread through such 
an extensive country, 1 The American 
Crisis on Peace,’ ‘ Rights of Man,’ ‘Age 
of Reason,’ etc., etc. He bequeaths a 
legacy to ‘ Margaret Bonnerville, in 
trust of her children, to bring them 
well up, give them good and useful 
learning, and instruct them in their 
duty to God, and the practice of 
morality.’ ” 

As this will was recorded on the 
10th of June, 1809, five months after 
the date of its execution, it may be 
considered as the testator’s death-bed 
confession of religious faith. That he 
was not an Atheist, or, at least, that at 
the eleventh hour, he recognized the 
Supreme Being, is evident; but his 
peculiar expressions in regard to his 
religious faith, and the absence of any 
allusion to the Savior, suggested that 
he rejected the doctrines of Christian¬ 
ity, and was what is termed a Deist. 


JAMES JBOGARDUS. 

This prolific inventor was born in 
Catskill, New York, March 14,1800. 
He was a descendant of Dominee 
Bogardus, one of the early settlers, 
and engaged in farming. At the age 
of fourteen, James was apprenticed to 
a watch maker, and subsequently 
became a skillful workman. By close 
application he became a good die 
sinker and engraver. Desiring to see 
something of the world, in 1820 he 
went to Savannah, Ga., and there 
worked at engraving. He afterward 


returned to New York, engaged in 
watchmaking, and invented a three¬ 
wheeled chronometer clock, for which 
he received the highest premium at the 
first Fair held bv the American Insti- 

«s 

tute. In 1828 he invented the ring 
flyer for cotton spinning, now in 
general use. In 1829 he invented the 
eccentric mills, which differ from all 
other mills; the grinding-stones or 
plates running the same way with 
nearly equal speed, but eccentric to 
each other. He also invented a 
machine for transferring bank note 
plates for Messrs. Rawdon, Wright & 
Co., which invention is in universal 
use for that purpose. In September, 
1836, he visited England, and, in 
competition with English and French 
engravers, made a machine that ex¬ 
celled all others in engraving the head 
of Ariadne in relief, and which would 
also, from the same medal, twist the 
face in a variety of comic shapes. 
This same machine engraved a portrait 
of the Queen, Sir Robert Peel, and 
others. While in England he con¬ 
tracted with a company in London to 
build a machine for transferring bank 
note plates and other work, and also a 
machine for engine-turning, which 
machine was to copy engine-engrav¬ 
ing. A reward being offered in 
England for the best plan of carrying 
out the penny post system, Mr. Bogar¬ 
dus’ plan was adopted over 2,600 
applicants, and is now universally 
used. Returning to New York in 1840, 
he invented machines for pressing 
glass tumblers, etc., now in common 
use, and also a machine for cutting 
india-rubber into fine threads. In 
1847 he put into execution his long 
cherished ideas of iron buildings; con¬ 
structing a large factory in New York 
city entirely of iron, five stories high, 
ninety feet long, and the first cast-iron 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


497 


building in the world. Since then, 
iron buildings have been erected in 
nearly all the principal cities of the 
United States and elsewhere. This 
invention formed a new branch of 
business for mechanics, benefited 
nearly every foundery in the country, 
and gave an immense impetus to the 
manufacture of iron. 


THE BROTHERHOODS. 

Freemasonry. 

The society of Ancient Free and 
Accepted Masons, is, probably, the 
most ancient social institution in the 
world. It is impossible to write its 
history, for its origin is shrouded in 
obscurity, and clouded with conflict¬ 
ing tradition. A constant research, 
and enthusiastic and faithful study on 
the part of its votaries, has dispelled 
many of the untenable legends con¬ 
nected with the institution, without in 
the least impairing its general history, 
its philosophy, or its sublime teachings. 
Intelligent Masons no longer indulge 
in such nonsense as “ Noachite Mason¬ 
ry,” dating the origin of the order 
anterior to the flood, or that other in¬ 
sanity of sentimentalism which makes 
Masonry coeval with creation, simply 
because it is simple truth. The fact 
that it is merely a human social organ¬ 
ization, founded upon the absolute 
commands of God to man, showing us 
our duty to each other, through our 
responsibility to Him, is fast becoming 
(as it ought,) the fourth great light in 
Masonry, and destroys all that fabulous 
history which makes a great social 
organization in the days of Adam and 
Noah, when there was but one family 
on the whole face of the earth. The 
intelligent Free Mason of to-day, very 
properly repudiates all this supersti¬ 
tious faith, while he fully appreciates 


the absolute truth of the tenets of his 
order, and the extraordinary beauty 
and exactness of the allegories in which 
they are taught. 

It is impossible for any person to 
even guess when or where this magnifi¬ 
cent system of morality and brotherly 
love had its commencement. That it 
is of very ancient origin is proven by 
the fact that it is found among all the 
nations of the earth, teaching, by dif¬ 
ferent rites, the one great lesson of the 
dignity of man, and the holiness of 
brotherly love. Its legislative and 
subordinate government, its laws, its 
discipline, and its means of recognition 
are the same all over the world. There 
is no buncombe in the statement that 
it has a universal language, which 
addresses the ear, the eye and the hand, 
and which is known among the faithful 
throughout the globe. 

It is safe to presume that Free Ma¬ 
sonry had its origin long before the 
Christian era, when all trades were 
wrought in secret. At an early day it 
came in contact with the theological 
doctrines of the Egyptians, the Greeks 
and the Tyrians, and a system of moral 
philosophy was grafted on the oper¬ 
ative part of the institution, which 
operative part in the course of time, 
was lost to sight in the brighter rays 
of the faith, the hope and the charity 
which its purely moral lessons taught. 
There is nothing to disprove that the 
blending of the moral or 44 speculative ” 
Masonry with the operative part, or 
stone-masonry, was the result of the 
great executive ability of King Solo¬ 
mon, although some of the more radi¬ 
cal of the modern Masons deny it. Be 
that as it may, the Free Masonry of the 
present day is entirely speculative; or, 
as Lafayette so beautifully expressed it, 
44 a system of morality veiled in alio- 
gory and illustrated by symbols.” Its 








498 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


great object is to teach, through the 
teachings of God, the one Great Father 
of Mankind, the dignity of our human¬ 
ity, and our personal duties toward our 
fellow-men. Its sublime lessons are 
taught in different countries by differ¬ 
ent rites and ceremonies, just as the 
divergent branches of a tree bear the 
same fruit from a common stem. The 
first three degrees, (or what is called 
“ Symbolic Masonry,”) are the same all 
the world over: and any Master Mason 
can visit any Lodge, even though he 
may not understand a word of the 
language in which the business of that 
Lodge is conducted. This is the parent 
trunk; and from it the allegorical 
branches shoot far and wide. The 
most universally disseminated of the 
higher degrees, are those known as the 
“ Ancient and Accepted ” or “ Scottish ” 
Rite. It is well known in America; 
and is the only rite known in Asia,' 
Continental Europe and South Amer¬ 
ica. It consists of thirty-three degrees, 
the last of which is rarely attained. 
The u York ” or “ American ” Rite, is 
the one best known in the United 
States. It also has numerous bodies 
in Great Britain and Canada. It con¬ 
sists of thirteen degrees, of which the 
Royal Arch is the seventh, and the 
Knight Templar the twelfth. It is 
really an off-shoot of the Scotch Rite, 
and is courteously recognized by all 
“high Masons” throughout the world, 
although practiced only in countries 
speaking the English language. The 
“ Swedish ” Rite consists of twelve de¬ 
grees, the fifth of which, “ Master of 
St. Andrew,” makes its possessor a 
nobleman in the civil law of Sweden. 
The King of Sweden is always a Mason, 
and is the hereditary Grand Master of 
the Kingdom. 

Masonry has always gathered round 
its altars the greatest and best of men. 


Americans can point with pride to 
Washington, Franklin, Lafayette, Hen¬ 
ry Clay, Grand Master of Kentucky; 
Andrew Jackson, Grand Master of 
Tennessee; De Witt Clinton, Grand. 
Master of New York; Bishop Gris¬ 
wold, of Connecticut; Bishop Chase, of 
Illinois, and many other clergy, states¬ 
men and philosophers. 

At the present time the Prince of 
Wales (33d) is the Grand Master of 
England. The Emperor William (33d) 
is Grand Master of Germany. His son, 
the Crown Prince (32d) is Deputy 
Grand Master. Garibaldi is (or was) 
Grand Master of Italy. 

Odd Fellowship. 

The eternal and beautiful principles 
of brotherly love, relief and truth, have 
given rise to the formation of many 
societies, having for their object the 
love and care of the great human fam¬ 
ily. Men can have no nobler object in 
life; and no society of men has more 
nobly fulfilled this pleasant duty than 
the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. 

This order first saw the light in the 
city of Baltimore. Its birthday was 
the twenty-sixth day of April, 1819. 
Its founders were Thomas Wildey, 
John Welsh, John Duncan, John 
Cheathem and Richard Rushworth. 
They declared their object to be “ the 
aid and protection of brothers when 
in sickness and on travel, and for the 
purpose of benevolence and charity;” 
and the motto they adopted was, “We 
command you to visit the sick, relieve 
the distressed, bury the dead, and edu¬ 
cate the orphan.” The only creed it 
requires of its candidates, is a belief in 
the one living and true God. All men 
of good moral character, of whatever 
party, sect or creed, are alike open to 
its responsibility and entitled to its 
benefits. 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


499 


In its social life, Odd Fellowship lias 
done a vast deal of good. Its tendency 
to promote friendship and good feeling 
among its members is one of the most 
beautiful features. In this age of self¬ 
ishness, when individual aggrandize¬ 
ment is the chief motive of human 
actions, and men in their daily strug¬ 
gles for wealth or power are continu¬ 
ally coming into violent collision with 
each other, it is pleasing to reflect that 
an institution has been established by 
which confidence among men is cre¬ 
ated, and an opportunity given for the 
free exercise of all the finer and nobler 
feelings and impulses of our nature. 
Nothing is so fatal to friendship as 
distrust; and when men are taught to 
act towards their most intimate friends 
as if they might some day become ene¬ 
mies, they soon learn to check all 
those exhibitions of feeling and sym¬ 
pathy which might expose them to the 
schemes of the cunning and designing, 
or subject them to the ridicule of the 
worldly and heartless. But among 
Odd Fellows, where man meets man as 
brother and equal, does he feel safe 
in opening the inmost recesses of his 
heart, and laying bare his cares, his 
woes, and his sorrows, and give full 
scope to all the warm affections and 
noble impulses of his nature, or seek 
the consolation and sympathy of his 
fellows without fear of exposure or 
ridicule. 

But, viewed merely in the light of 
an association for the purpose of af¬ 
fording pecuniary assistance to its 
members in case of need, Odd-Fellow¬ 
ship presents many features worthy of 
our highest admiration. By means of 
association — that great principle of 
modern civilization, by which cities 
have been built, rivers turned from 
their channels, and even “ old ocean’s 
gray and melancholy waste ” made 


subservient to the wants of man, Odd- 
Fellowsliip proposes to effect that 
which individual charity could never 
accomplish. 

Under the best of governments, and 
in the most prosperous times, we are 
liable to misfortunes, which no human 
foresight can guard against, and no hu¬ 
man prudence prevent. Independently 
of the natural causes which may, in 
the twinkling of an eye, blight our 
fairest hopes, and lay prostrate in the 
dust the hard earnings of many a 
weary hour of toil and labor, there are 
other causes continually at work to 
sap the foundations of human happi¬ 
ness and prosperity. Envy, hatred, 
and rivalry are still to be found in the 
world; and, in the fierce struggle for 
wealth and honors, no man knows how 
soon he may be supplanted by a wily 
adversary, or foiled by a malignant foe. 
The race is not to the swift, nor the 
battle to the strong; and success in 
worldly matters depends so often upon 
accidental circumstances, that the 
great race of human life may be well 
compared to the game of chance, where 
although much depends upon the skill 
of the player, still more depends upon 
the wild caprice of fortune. 

To guard its members against these 
strange vicissitudes, is one of the 
objects of Odd-Fellowship; and thus 
it may not improperly be called 
a mutual insurance association, where, 
in consideration of a trifling weekly 
contribution, the worthy brother has 
guaranteed to him a regular allowance 
during sickness, and assistance in case 
of actual necessity and want. Thus 
the Odd-Fellow is not thrown upon the 
cold charity of a heartless world, but 
applies for assistance to that fund 
which he contributed to raise, and 
upon which he has a right to rely for 
aid. He feels none of that galling 






500 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


sense of dependence which the recep¬ 
tion of charity from strangers produce, 
but fearlessly throws himself upon 
those resources to which he has a legal 
and equitable right, with the full con¬ 
fidence that they will not be denied 
him or grudgingly bestowed. 

The present status of the order must 
be eminently satisfactory to the mem¬ 
bership. According to the last re¬ 
port (September, 1888), of Theo. A. 
Ross, Grand Secretary of the Soveregn 
Grand Lodge, it has two independent 
Grand Lodges), German Empire and 
Australasa), 48 Subordinate Grand 
Encampments; 2,077 Subordinate 
Encampments; 65 Subordinate Grand 
Lodges; 8,570 Subordinate Lodges; 
104,405 encampment members; 574,- 
161 lodge members; 1,498 degree lod¬ 
ges of the Daughters of Rebekah; 39,- 
176 members of Rebekah lodges; 40,389 
sisters, members of Rebekah Lodges; 
500 Cantons of Patriarchs Militant 
(estimated), and 20,000 Chevaliers, 
rank and file (estimated). Statistics 
of the order from 1830 to December 31, 
1887: Initiations in subordinate lod¬ 
ges, 1,517,420; members relieved, 
1,328,189; widowed families relieved, 
169,766, members deceased 130,265; 
Total relief, $46,020,890.79; total re¬ 
ceipts, $121,235,779.18. The increase 
in lodge membership during 1887 was 
25,422—the largest gain in any one year 
since 1873. The relief paid in 1887 was 
$2,253,776.02; receipts, $6,065,091.42. 

Knights of Pythias. 

This younger brother in the family 
of secret and benevolent societies was 
organized in Washington, D. C., in the 
year 1864. Its originator was Mr. J. 
H. Rathbone. Its main purpose, as 
its historian, Mr. Joseph D. Weeks 
says, is u the inculcation of lessons of 
friendship, based upon the old story of 


Damon and Pythias.” The oldest 
lodge of the order is Washington 
Lodge No. 1. The first officers were 
J. H. Rathbone, Chancelor, J. R. 
Woodruff, Vice Chancelor, J. T. K. 
Plant, Patriarch, D. L. Burnet, Scribe, 
A. Van Der Veer, Banker, R. A. 
Champion, Assistant Banker, G. R. 
Conert, Assistant Scribe. In less 
than three months from its organiza¬ 
tion another lodge was established at 
Washington Navy Yard. Two more 
lodges were formed the same year. For 
about a year the order languished; but 
it soon revived, and commenced pitch¬ 
ing its tents in Pennsylvania. It 
grew rapidly in that State, laying there 
the foundation of its present prosperity 
and usefulness. From there it went 
into Maryland, New Jersey and Dela¬ 
ware. On the fifteenth of May, 1868, 
a convention of the different grand 
lodges met in Philadelphia, and organ¬ 
ized the Grand Lodge of the world. 
The order soon afterwards spread into 
New York, Virginia, Connecticut, 
Louisiana, Nebraska, California, West 
Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, 
Massachusetts, Indiana, Iowa, South 
Carolina, Georgia, Wyoming, New 
Hampshire, Missouri, Vermont, Min¬ 
nesota, Alabama, New Brunswick, 
North Carolina, Colorado, Arkansas, 
Utah, Oregon, Washington Territory, 
Wyoming Territory, Hawaiian Islands, 
and Dacotah Territory in the order 
named. In all of these States the 
order flourishing more and more every 
year, having now hundreds of lodges, 
and thousands of faithful members. 
Its last report shows 1471 Subordinate 
Lodges, and a total membership of 
101,513. 

There was a time, however, in the 
early history of the order, that was 
dark and disheartening. “It was forced 
to endure the struggle with poverty. 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


501 


Nothing discouraged, the members 
worked on; and though no one stood 
near to prophecy of success, their own 
consciousness was itself prophetic, 
through the Fall and Winter of 1864. 
Early in February a gleam of hope 
appeared, by its extension into Vir¬ 
ginia. This was the first time that 
the order had gone beyond the city of 
its birth; and for a moment it roused 
the hope of every Knight. But the 
coming of Spring, the uncertainty 
about everything of a business nature, 
the high price of gold, and the con¬ 
stant changes taking place at the 
national capital, all worked against the 
order. The finances of the Lodges 
were in a desperate condition, with no 
revenue, and little prospect of any. In 
April, two lodges in Washington 
ceased to hold meetings; and the other 
could hardly command a quorum. In 
July, the lodge at Alexandria died, 
aged three months. In June, 1865, 
the Grand Lodge held a meeting with 
only one Lodge represented. A month 
after, Franklin Lodge was the only one 
in existence. It was a dark hour, but 
the one little band of true Knights 
toiled and waited. In May, 1866, the 
Grand Lodge was re-organized, and 
from that time to this, the order has 
grown and prospered constantly. 


HOW NOTES AND FRACTIONAL CUR¬ 
RENCY ARE MADE. 

In the manufacture of bank notes 
and fractional currency by our gov¬ 
ernment, the utmost care is taken to 
prevent any errors, and a perfect sys¬ 
tem is required and followed in each 
and every department. First the ink 
for printing is made in a large room in 
the building, where ten or a dozen 
paint mills are busily grinding the 
colors and oil together. Two large 


ones are filled with green ink, sug¬ 
gestive of liquid greenbacks, another, 
with vermillion, while others are mak¬ 
ing blue, red, and other tinted inks. 
Nothing but the finest color and 
the best boiled linseed oil is here 
used. The paper is received directly 
from the Government, cut in sheets of 
the required form. The fractional cur¬ 
rency and larger notes are made of a 
peculiar material containing colored 
fibers, manufactured at Glen Mills, 
near Philadelphia. The paper for 
postage stamps is made by the Bank 
Note Company, of the best linen. It 
is of short fiber, very fine, and ex¬ 
tremely strong. The sheets on which 
currency is to be printed are counted 
as soon as received, and the result tele¬ 
graphed to Washington for verifica¬ 
tion. Some idea of the accuracy re¬ 
quired may be gathered from the fact 
that, for every sheet unaccounted for, 
the company has to pay in cash the 
full value of what might have been 
printed on it; that is to say, if a sheet 
intended for four $1,000 notes is miss¬ 
ing, $4,000 must be returned. The 
paper varies in size according to the 
purpose for which it is designed. Thus 
the sheet for 10 cent fractional cur¬ 
rency is by 16f inches, and so on up 
for the larger denominations. All the 
paper is not received perfectly blank, 
for the reason that the National Com¬ 
pany prints but one side of each bill. 
The material for the 15 cent and 25 
cent notes is supplied with the backs 
already finished—the work being done 
by the American Bank note Company; 
while, vice versa , the 10 cent bills are 
sent to the last mentioned corporation 
from the National Company in a simi¬ 
lar condition. The sheets being 
counted are placed in heaps, marked 
off in sets of 100 and 1,000. When 
issued for printing, the workman re- 







502 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ceiving them has to present an order 
signed by the Superintendent. They 
are then charged against him in his pass 
book, when he carries them away to be 
damped, this being done by simply 
wrapping them in wet cloths. 

In a large apartment, in the center 
of which are 116 presses arranged 
closely together. These are simply 
cylinders moved by long handled lev¬ 
ers, and are each attended by three 
men and a girl. Here is a plate rest¬ 
ing upon a small iron box warmed 
underneath by gas flames. A work¬ 
man rapidly covers it with ink with a 
plate printers roller and passes it to 
another operative at his side, who 
wipes the plate over with a soft cotton 
cloth, and then polishes with the palm 
of his hand covered with whiting, thus 
removing the ink from its surface but 
not from the engraved lines, which 
remain filled. This done, the plate is 
placed, face up, in the press. The girl 
stands ready with a sheet of damped 
paper which she carefully lays upon 
the plate. The pressman turns the 
levers, the cylinder revolves, the plate 
passes under it, and the paper is re¬ 
moved bearing a perfect impression. 
It might be naturally imagined that 
the workmen engaged in this portion 
of the manufacture would often suc¬ 
cumb to the temptation of furtively 
running a sheet of ordinary paper 
through the press, and thus possessing 
themselves of, say ; 200 ninety cent 
stamps in a moment’s time. But such 
a proceeding is practically impossible. 
Apart from the constant vigilance of 
the superintendents, the presses are 
placed so close together that the men 
can overlook each other’s every action. 
One of the strongest safeguards is the 
esprit de corps among the workmen 
themselves. So sensitive are they that 
they recently insisted upon the dis¬ 


charge of one of their number who, 
merely to try his press, ran a sheet of 
common brown paper through it. 

As soon as a printer has completed 
the work assigned to him, he hands it, 
made up in “ books ” of 100 impres¬ 
sions, each sheet inclosed between two 
others of brown paper, to a clerk. He 
is then credited with his delivery, 
spoiled sheets being counted the same 
as perfect ones, so that if his return is 
correct, his debit account on his pass 
book, which is kept in a totally differ¬ 
ent apartment and by other employees, 
is thus balanced. The finished im¬ 
pressions are now carefully counted 
and inspected. The spoiled ones are 
removed and sent to Government 
agents to be burnt, while the others 
are hung in the drying room. This 
apartment is heated by steam pipes, 
and the paper is suspended by wires, 
for a day or two, until perfectly dry. 
Then the brown paper is removed and 
the sheets, packed between leaves of 
press board, are subjected to the action 
of a powerful hydraulic press. They 
are then once more inspected and 
counted. 


INTENTION OF THE LEYDEN JAR. 

Certain parts of works on physical 
science, written a century or more ago, 
are at the present day sometimes very 
interesting to read on account of the 
expressions of delight indulged in by 
the authors, on matters which, at pres¬ 
ent, are considered of a trifling interest 
compared with what is now known 
in regard to the sciences of nature. 
Priestly, in his “ History of Electric¬ 
ity,” published in London, 1767, says: 
u The end of the year 1745, and the 
beginning of 1746, is celebrated by 
reason of the most astonishing discov¬ 
eries which have ever been made in 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


503 


the whole field of electrical science, 
namely, the wonderful condensation of 
this force in a glass named the Leyden 
jar, because it was first made by 
Cuneus, of Leyden, while experiment¬ 
ing with Professor van Muschen¬ 
broek, 11 etc. How the author would 
be amazed if he could return, after a 
sleep of only one century, and be 
initiated in the since discovered myste¬ 
ries of galvanism, voltaic batteries, 
electro-plating, electro-magnetism, dy¬ 
namic electricity, the electric light, 
magneto-electricity, the laws of Ohm, 
the electric telegraph, the modern elec¬ 
tric machine, the condenser (which is, 
for voltaic electricity, what the Leyden 
jar is for frictional electricity,) the 
Ruhmkorff coil, the Geissler tube, the 
application of the spectroscope to sub¬ 
stances illuminated by electric light, 
the effect of electro-magnetism on 
polarized light, and then finally 
witness the modern experiments which 
promise discoveries that, during the 
next century, will even put all these in 
the shade! 

The history of the discovery of that 
form of electric induction on which 
the invention of the Leyden jar is 
founded, is thus given by Desaguillers: 
w Professor van Muschenbroek, of Ley¬ 
den, Holland, and some of his friends, 
observing that electrified bodies, 
exposed to the air, lost their electricity 
rapidly, imagined that, if they inclosed 
a conducting body in a non-conductor, 
it would become possible to charge 
more electricity into the conductor 
and retain it longer. As a glass bottle 
was the most convenient non-conduc¬ 
tor, and water the most common con¬ 
ductor, water was placed in a bottle, a 
brass rod put in the water, and the 
same charged by the intervention of 
this rod; but nothing particular was 
observed till Mr. Cuneus, who sup¬ 


ported the glass flask by his left hand 
while it was being charged, supposing 
that the water had received as much 
electricity as it could contain, at¬ 
tempted to withdraw the brass wire 
with his right hand, when he was sud¬ 
denly frightened by a violent shock in 
his arms and chest.' 1 The water served 
here for the inner coating of the jar, 
and his left hand for the outer coating; 
and yet, however simple and easily 
repeated the experiment is, there were 
at that time many experimenters who, 
after reading the published accounts 
and trying it for themselves, did not 
succeed, being still in the dark about 
the conditions required for success, 
which at the present day are so well 
known. 

It has been proved that the discov¬ 
ery of the same principle and its 
application by Yon Kleist, in Ger¬ 
many, in the same year, was without 
knowledge of the above, each investi¬ 
gator working independently of the 
other. Those who succeeded gave the 
most exaggerated account of their feel¬ 
ings. Professor Yan Muschenbroek, 
who made the experiment with a flask 
of very thiu glass, and therefore ob¬ 
tained a most powerful charge, declared, 
in a published letter that he was so 
violently struck in his arms, shoulders, 
and chest that he lost his breath, and 
two days elapsed before he was 
recovered from his fright. He adds 
that he would not submit to a second 
shock for the whole kingdom of 
France. 

M. Allamand made the experiment 
with a common glass tumbler, and says 
also that the shock took his breath 
away, that he felt such a violent pain 
in his arms as to fear serious conse¬ 
quences, but that it passed over with¬ 
out injury to him. Winckler ; of Leip- 
sic, tells another story. He says that 





504 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


when he first performed the Leyden 
experiment upon himself, he felt strong 
convulsions over his whole body; his 
blood was brought into a most violent 
agitation, and a burning fever would 
have been the result if he had not 
taken cooling medicines. He felt also 
a heaviness in his head, as if a large 
stone laid upon it; it caused him twice 
to bleed at the nose, which otherwise 
seldom took place. His wife appears 
to have been of an investigating turn 
of mind, and much less afraid than he; 
she took the shock twice, but Winckler 
says that she was then so weakened 
that she could not walk, and a week 
later, having obtained the necessary 
courage to permit him to give her 
another shock, she commenced at once 
to bleed from the nose. 

But everybody was not so foolishly 
frightened. M. Bose, with a truly 
philosophical courage worthy of Em¬ 
pedocles wished to be killed by the 
electric shock, in order that the ac¬ 
count of his scientific death might 
procure an article for the Memoirs of 
the French Academy of Sciences, but 
his wish was not fulfilled. 

The electric shock produced by the 
Leyden jar attracted then so much 
general interest that many persons 
traveled around Europe and made a 
living by administering it, some of 
them pretending to cure by it all kinds 
of diseases. 

Foremost of those who advanced 
this branch of science must be men¬ 
tioned Gralath, in Germany, who, in 
1746, gave the shock at great distances 
and through twenty persons at once, 
and invented the electric battery, con¬ 
sisting of a number of Leyden jars. 
Finally, Drs. Watson and Bevis, ac¬ 
cording to the Philosophical Transac¬ 
tions, found the modern method of 
covering the outside of the jars with 


tinfoil, while the first connected several 
separate masses of combustible fluid 
with metalic wires, and ignited them 
all with the same spark. After ac¬ 
counting for many other experiments, 
he says, in a prophetic style: “Not¬ 
withstanding the many great discover¬ 
ies made during the latter years in this 
branch of natural sciences, posterity 
will consider our knowledge to be in 
its infancy; therefore we must, in so 
far as experiments justify us, be ready 
to modify or abandon our conclusions 
as soon as other more probable theo¬ 
ries are proposed. 11 

Another investigator, quoting these 
words fifty years later, says: “ Consid¬ 
ering the rapid progress since that 
time, we may hope that even the so 
enormously advanced science of the 
present day (1795) will, at some future 
time, be looked upon as merely in its 
infancy. 11 

These prophecies have been fulfilled, 
and who dares to assert that the 
climax of knowledge has now been 
reached? Have not the number of 
discoveries and their importance been 
progressing, since that time, in an 
increasing ratio ? Have not our scien¬ 
tists become more and more expert in 
the art of making discoveries and 
inventions? What then will posterity 
witness only thirty years hence, in the 
beginning of the twentieth century? 
Who can prophecy the mysteries of 
the future, in regard to science, which 
is always surpassing anything man 
can conceive a priori? Who can name 
a subject more interesting, more use¬ 
ful, more fascinating, to the lover of 
truth, progress, and beauty?— Scien¬ 
tific American. 

Horse-shoes made of iron were first 
used in A. D. 481. Stirrups were not 
made till a century later. 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


0(JO 


A BARREL OF FLOUR. 


“Why were 196 pounds of flour, in¬ 
stead of 200, called a barrel?” The 
flour barrel is an American institution, 
and was adopted before the Revolution. 
The millers desired to make its con¬ 
tents as nearly 200 pounds net as con¬ 
formity to the weights then in use 
would allow; thus the ton of 2,240 
pounds was divided into 20 hundred 
weight (cwt) of 112 pounds each, the 
hundred weight into four quarters of 
28 pounds each, and the quarter into 2 
stone of 14 pounds each. The nearest 
to 200 pounds was 14 stone, or 196 
pounds, and the practice of putting that 
weight into a barrel of flour has never 
been changed. The stone (14 pounds) 
is in very general, almost universal, 
use in England to this day, especially 
in respect to agricultural products. 


THE ORIGIN OF PETROLEUM. 


The recent development of the re¬ 
productive power, of petroleum wells 
that had been for some years aban¬ 
doned because they were believed to 
be exhausted (says the Petroleum 
Monthly), is not alone a matter of 
value, to the owners of the territory 
that was until lately presumed to be 
incapable of further production, but it 
affords a more trustworthy basis than 
any the world has hitherto been able 
to obtain for forming an approximate¬ 
ly correct opinion concerning the 
chemical process whereby petroleum is 
generated. Until within a few days, 
a popular opinion prevailed that petro¬ 
leum, in spite of its name, was the 
product of coal; and so nearly was 
this idea general among a majority of 
people, that many foreign receivers of 


petroleum are still accustomed to order 
it as “ coal oil.” The belief, however, 
that the terrene oil of Pennsylvania 
and Canada is exclusively a product of 
bituminous coal may now safely be 
pronounced to be an error. There is 
certainly no evidence that coal is not 
one of the substances from which 
petroleum is distilled; but, at the same 
time, it is a somewhat strange fact, 
allowing a proper degree of credit to 
the belief that coal does enter into the 
composition of petroleum, that no coal 
beds susceptible of being worked are 
known to exist within fifty miles of 
oil-producing territory. Again, it is 
a manifest and recognized fact that 
carbon does predominate as an integral 
essence of petroleum; and the other 
fact that the oil territory of Pennsyl¬ 
vania is surrounded by beds of bitu¬ 
minous coal, renders it eminently 
reasonable to believe that coal enters 
largely—if not, indeed, more largely 
than any other substance—into the pro¬ 
cess of distillation whereby petroleum 
is produced. Petroleum is certainly a 
mineral oil. But whatever may be the 
number and chemical variety of the 
minerals from which it is formed, the 
distillation of it is more intimately as¬ 
sociated with limestone than with any 
other mineral. Sandstone is also found 
in boring oil wells, but it is from the 
pores of limestone that, in the chem¬ 
ical process of extracting oil from the 
minerals found in connection with its 
production, the greatest quantity of 
petroleum is taken. It is singular that, 
in boring for oil, no coal has ever been 
found, even in the smallest quantities, 
while sand, sandstone, and limestone 
abound. The inference, therefore, can¬ 
not be escaped that petroleum is the 
product of the distillation of at least 
two, and probably of more than three 
distinct mineral properties. 









506 


THE PEOPLES’ LITER AH Y OF INFORMATION. 


GLUE. 

Glue was made and in common use 
by the ancient cabinet-makers of 
Egypt. Various sticky matters were 
used by the Greeks, such as glue, betel- 
lime and cobblers wax. In Lucretius 1 
Book VI you will find where it speaks 
of wood being joined together with 
glue, prepared from certain parts of 
oxen and with such strength that the 
veins of boards will open in a crack 
sooner than the seams of oxglue will 
relax their fastenings. Glue is made 
of the clippings of hides, horns and 
hoofs; washed in lime-water, boiled, 
skimmed, strained, evaporated, cooled 
in molds, cut into slices and dried upon 
nets. The substances most largely and 
generally employed are the parings of 
hides and skins from the tanneries and 
slaughter houses, known as glue pieces, 
fleshings, pelts from furriers, the hoofs 
and ears of horses, calves and sheep. 
The parings of ox and other thick hides 
make the strongest and afford about 
forty-five per cent of glue. 

The clippings and refuse materials 
are first placed in a lime pit, and when 
sufficiently steeped they are immersed 
in water, well washed, rinsed, and pla¬ 
ced on hurdles to dry. Afterwards 
they are boiled to the consistency of 
thick jelly, which is passed, while hot, 
through osier baskets, or bags and nets 
made of rope, to separate the grosser 
particles of dirt or bones from it, and 
allowed to stand some time to purify 
further. When the remaining impur¬ 
ities have settled to the bottom it is 
melted and boiled a second time, and 
when thick enough it is drawn off into 
a vessel and maintained at a tempera¬ 
ture which will keep it liquid. This 
gives further time for the deposition of 
solid impurities, and for clarification, 
by the addition of such chemicals as 
the manufacturer may prefer. 


The glue is then run off into wooden 
coolers, about six feefi long, one foot 
broad and two feet deep. Here it be¬ 
comes a firm jelly, which is cut out by 
a spade into square cakes, each cake 
being deposited in a sort of wooden 
box, open in several slits or divisions 
to the back. The glue is cut into slices 
by passing a brass wire, attached to a 
kind of bow, along the slits. These 
slices are placed upon nets, the marks 
of which are seen on the dry glue, and 
stretched in wooden frames, removed 
to the open air, placed in piles, with 
proper intervals for the admission of 
air, each pile being roofed in, as a pro¬ 
tection from the weather. When the 
glue is about three quarters dry it is 
removed into lofts, where in the course 
of some weeks the hardening is com¬ 
plete. They are after drying dipped 
into hot water and slightly rubbed 
with a brush wetted with boiling water 
to give them a gloss, and store-dried. 
This furnishes the palest and best glue. 
Any scraps of gelatinous matter left in 
the boiler, is treated with fresh water 
but produces an article of inferior 
quality. 


THE INFLUENCE OF NEWSPAPERS* 


A school teacher, who has been 
engaged a long time in his profession, 
and witnessed the influence of a news- 
apper upon the minds of a family and 
children, writes as follows: I have 
found it to be a universal fact, without 
exception, that those scholars of both 
sexes, and of all ages, who have access 
to newspapers at home, when compared 
with those who have not, are: 

1. Better readers, excellent in pro¬ 
nunciation, and consequently read more 
understandingly. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


507 


2. They are better spellers, and define 
words with ease and accuracy. 

3. They obtain practical knowledge 
of geography in almost half the time it 
requires of others, as the newspapers 
have made them acquainted with the 
location of the important places of 
nations, their government and doings 
on the globe. 

4. They are better grammarians for 
having become so familiar with every 
variety of styles in the newspapers, 
from the common place advertisement 
to the finished and classical oration of 
the statesman, they more readily com¬ 
prehend the meaning of the text, and 
constantly analyze its construction with 
accuracy. 

5. They write better compositions, 
using better language, containing more 
thoughts, more clearly and more cor¬ 
rectly expressed. 

6. These young men who have for 
years been readers of newspapers are 
always taking the lead in debating 
societies, exhibiting a more extensive 
knowledge upon a greater variety of 
subjects, and expressing their views 
with greater fluency, clearness and 
correctness. 

“ THE OLD OAKEN BUCKET,” 

The popular song of u The Old Oaken 
Backet ” is said to have its origin under 
the following circumstances, which 
give it additional interest : Some 
years ago, when Woodworth, the prin¬ 
ter, and several others, “ Old New York¬ 
ers,” were brother typos in a printing 
office which was situated at the corner 
of Chestnut and Chambers streets, there 
were few places in the city of New 
York where one could enjoy the luxury 
of a really “ good drink.” Among the 
few places most worthy of patronage 
was an establishment kept by Mallory 


in Franklin street, or about the same 
spot where St. John’s Hall recently 
stood. Woodworth, in company with 
several particular friends, had dropped 
in at this place one afternoon for the 
purpose of taking some “brandy and 
water,” which Mallory was famous for 
keeping. The liquor was super-excel¬ 
lent, and Woodworth seemed inspired 
by it, for after taking a draught he laid 
his glass upon the table, and smacking 
his lips declared that Mallory’s eau de 
vie was superior to any he had ever 
tasted. “ No,” said Mallory, “you are 
quite mistaken; there was one thing 
which in both our estimations far sur¬ 
passed this in the way of drinking.” 
“What was that?” asked Woodworth, 
dubiously. “ The draught of pure fresh 
spring water we used to drink from the 
old oaken bucket that hung in the well 
after our return from the labors of the 
field on a sultry day in summer.” The 
teardrops glistened for a moment in 
Woodworth’s eyes. “True! true!” he 
replied, and soon quitted the place. He 
returned to the office, grasped the pen, 
and in half an hour “ The Old Oaken 
Bucket,” one of the most delightful 
compositions in our language, was 
ready in manuscript to be embalmed in 
; the memory of succeeding generations. 

THE OLD WORLD. 

The recent expeditions for the geo¬ 
logical survey of the Western States 
have furnished results which tend to 
show that America has a better claim 
to the title of “Old World” than Europe 
or Asia. Among the discoveries that 
! have been made is the former existence 
of a series of great lakes between the 
Mississippi River and the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains. Surrounding these there were 
a flora and a fuma of a tropical char¬ 
acter; and in the lower strata which at 













508 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


intervals come to the surface, many 
gigantic fossils are found, not only of 
great, extinct pachyderms or thick- 
skinned animals, but also fossil turtles, 
mastodons, tigers, hyenas, wolves and 
camels. The question has been often 
learnedly and thoroughly discussed, 
and geologists who rank high among 
scientists are now disposed to regard 
the American continent as the earliest 
dry land that appeared. 


ARABIAN MODE OF PERFUMING. 

How the Arab ladies perfume them¬ 
selves is thus described by Sir Samuel 
Baker in his work on the Nile: “In 
the floor of a hut or tent, as it may 
chance to be, a small hole is excavated 
sufficiently large to contain a cham¬ 
pagne bottle. A fire of charcoal or 
simply glowing embers is made within 
the hole, into which the woman about 
to be scented throws a handful of 
drugs. She then takes off the clothes, 
or robe which forms her dress, and 
crouches over the fumes, while she 
arranges her robe to fall as a mantle 
from her neck to the ground like a 
tent. She now begins to perspire 
freely in the hot air bath, and the 
pores of the skin being open and moist, 
the volatile oil from the smoke of the 
burning perfumes is immediately ab¬ 
sorbed. By the time the fire has 
expired, the scenting process is com¬ 
pleted, and both her person and her 
robe are redolent with incense, with 
which they are so thoroughly impreg¬ 
nated that I have frequently smelt a 
party of women strongly at full a 
hundred yards distance, when the 
wind has been blowing from their 
direction. The scent, which is sup¬ 
posed to be very attractive to gentle¬ 
men, is composed of ginger, cloves, 


cinnamon, frankincense, and myrrh, a 
species of seaweed brought from the 
Red Sea, and lastly the horny disc 
which covers the aperture when the 
shell fish withdraws itself within its 
shell. The proportions of these ingre¬ 
dients in this mixture are according to 
taste.” 


THE USES OF OLD RAGS. 

Woolen rags as they come in from 
the peddlers, comprise every variety of 
fabric that it is possible to produce 
from wool, from a coarse and harsh 
carpet to the finest and softest product 
of the loom. These are piled up in 
huge heaps upon the warehouse floor, 
and women and girls, whose wages 
average from four to five dollars a 
week, attack them on all sides and 
“ sort 11 them into no less than ten 
grades, each of which has a special use 
and an established value. The greater 
part of these are manufactured into 
u shoddy,” and, as this is a word con¬ 
cerning which a general misapprehen¬ 
sion exists, it may be well to devote a 
paragraph to its consideration. 

Shoddy is, perhaps, the best abused 
material in use. So far from being a 
mere sham and a poor substitute for 
wool, it is, in reality, a valuable mate¬ 
rial, and enters, in certain proportions, 
into the composition of nearly all 
cloth. It is not, as is generally sup¬ 
posed, woolen rags ground to a powder 
and worked into the cloth to give it 
weight, but wool fiber, combed out of 
wool fabrics by a peculiar process, and 
mixed with new wool when the latter 
is carded, is spun with it, and finally 
becomes a component part of the cloth. 

Thus, by mixing a due proportion of 
fine grade of shoddy or wool fibre with 
new wool of a coarse grade, a substan¬ 
tial yet soft and handsome fabric can 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


509 


be produced and sold at a moderate 
price; while the same thing, with fine 
high cost wool in the place of the 
much reviled shoddy, would cost far 
more and possess but little more value 
so far as wear and appearance are con¬ 
cerned. 

Cotton and linen rags are sorted 
with equal care. They are the princi¬ 
pal source of paper making material, 
and are in constant demand. Used 
alone, they make the highest grade of 
paper, while, in combination with 
varying proportions of paper stock, 
they produce the various grades of 
paper to be found in the market. 
Paper material may be used over and 
over again, provided always that a 
given amount of new rag stock is used, 
but it deteriorates in value with each 
process, owing to the breaking and 
consequent shortening of the fiber; 
and, beginning, say in a form of writ¬ 
ing paper of fine quality, it passes 
successively through the various grades, 
and eventually is found in the shape 
of a coarse article, possessing little 
strength and small value. 


SCALES. 

Weighing-machines and scales of 
some kinds were in use 1800 years 
B. C., as it is said, that Abraham at 
that time weighed out 400 shekels of 
silver current money with the mer¬ 
chant to Ephron the Hittite, as pay¬ 
ment for a piece of land including the 
cave and all the standing timber in the 
field and in the fence. This is said to 
be the earliest transfer of land of 
which record survives, and that the 
sale was made in the presence of 
witnesses. The superintendence of 
weights and measures in ancient Egypt 
belonged to the priests, until the privi¬ 
lege was removed from them by the 


Romans. The original form of weigh¬ 
ing scales was probably a bar suspended 
from the middle, and a board or shell 
suspended from each end, one to con¬ 
tain the weight and the other the 
matter to be weighed. The steelyard 
was probably so-called from its material 
and former length in England, and is 
also known as the Roman Balance. It 
was used in Rome under the name of 
staterd. It is said to be a Chinese in¬ 
vention. The lever scale has been in use 
in the United States for the last forty 
years. Platform scales were patented 
in England in 1796. The platform 
scales, as well as all other kind, manu¬ 
factured in this country, are about a& 
near perfection as skill and the best o i 
workmanship can make them. 


SILVER PLATING. 

The earliest method used for giving 
a sheet of metal a coating of silver is 
the only one, perhaps, to which the 
term silver plating can be strictly 
applied. In this process a sheet of 
copper was thoroughly cleaned and 
then treated with a strong solution of 
nitrate of silver, and next covered with 
a sheet of silver. After the metals had 
been heated red hot, they were rolled 
out together. The silver could be 
applied to either or both surfaces of 
the copper. After the sheets were 
formed in this way, they were beaten 
or stamped into various shapes. Ves¬ 
sels, such as coffee urns and teapots, 
were made b}^ beating out the parts 
separately, and then soldering them 
together. 

Analogous to this is the so-called 
close plating that is used to a consider¬ 
able extent for harness mountings. In 
this process, the article to be plated, 
which is generally made of iron, is first 
filed smooth, and is then coated with 












510 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


metallic tin, by dipping it first into 
acid, and then into molten tin. The 
silver is rolled into very thin sheets, 
then applied to the article, and bur¬ 
nished down with hot tools. These 
tools are heated hot enough to melt 
the tin, which therefore serves as a 
solder between the silver and iron. 

Fire silvering is effected by covering 
the article with a silver amalgam, or a 
mixture of spongj^ silver, salammon- 
iac, common salt, and corrosive subli¬ 
mate. The articles are then exposed 
to the heat of a muffle. 

Various processes have been pro¬ 
posed for giving a coating of silver in 
the wet way. These mostly depend 
upon the mixture of some salt of 
silver, such as the chloride of cyanide, 
with a reducing salt, such as cream of 
tartar, sulphite of soda, or cyanide of 
potassium. A good mixture for this 
purpose is one hundred parts of sul¬ 
phite of soda, with fifteen parts of 
chloride of silver. This should be 
made into a thick paste, and it is well 
to add a little prepared chalk, or rot¬ 
ten stone. The article to be coated is 
cleaned by any good polishing powder, 
and then rubbed with the preparation. 
The coating of silver is very thin, and 
soon wears off. 

All these methods have of late years 
been almost entirely superseded by the 
process of electro-plating. The arti¬ 
cles to be electro-plated are made from 
any metal that is cheap and can be 
easily worked. Britannia, which is an 
alloy of copper, antimony, and tin, or 
German silver, which is made from 
nickel, zinc, and copper, being perhaps 
the most commonly employed. These 
metals have the advantage that they 
are very nearly the same color as silver 
itself, and therefore when the silver is 
worn through, they do not show it so 
quickly as a dark metal would. 


The metals are first cast' into bars, 
and then worked into shape by rolling, 
stamping, or hammering. If an arti¬ 
cle consists of several pieces, these are 
soldered together; and if it is to 
be engraved it is engraved and en¬ 
tirely finished before being covered 
with silver. The article is cleaned 
by dipping it first into a solution 
of caustic soda or potash, then 
into an acid bath, and finally into a 
strong solution of cyanide of potas¬ 
sium, taking care to wash it thoroughly 
in pure water between the dippings. 
The articles are handled by means of 
the wires by which they are to be 
suspended in the bath, and on no ac¬ 
count must they be touched with the 
fingers, for every such touch will pro¬ 
duce a spot in the finished work. 
Having been thus thoroughly cleansed, 
it is connected with a strong battery, 
and hung in a solution of cyanide of 
silver and potassium. It remains in 
this only a few moments, until it is 
covered with a thin film of silver, when 
it is ready for the regular plating 
operation. 

The plating solution is made in two 
different ways. In the first, a solution 
of nitrate of silver is precipitated with 
either common salt or hydrochloric 
acid. The chloride is well washed, and 
then dissolved in a solution of cyanide 
of potassium. In the second, the silver 
is precipitated as cyanide by the cau¬ 
tious addition of cyanide of potassium, 
care being taken to avoid an excess; 
the cyanide is washed and then dis¬ 
solved as before. The strength of the 
solution is best found by experiment. 
It should not be too strong, or the 
silver will not be dense enough; nor 
too weak, or it will take too much 
battery power to deposit it. A very 
good solution is made by dissolving 
one part of cyanide of potassium in ten 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


511 


parts of water; adding chloride or 
cyanide of silver, so long as it con¬ 
tinues to be dissolved; next diluting 
with an equal bulk of water, and filter¬ 
ing; the solution is then ready for use. 
For small work, glass or earthen ware 
jars may be used to contain the solu¬ 
tion; but on the manufacturing scale, 
iron or wooden tanks lined with as- 
phaltum are employed. Plates of 
silver connected with the positive pole 
of the battery are suspended around 
the sides of the vessel containing the 
solution, and the articles to be plated 
are suspended from a heavy wire that 
passes over the middle of the vessel. 
This wire is frequently made into a 
triangle, which is placed in a vertical 
position, and suspended by its upper 
corner from a balance. Weights are 
then placed in the other pan of the 
balance, so that when the proper 
amount of silver has been deposited, 
the end of the beam to which the ar¬ 
ticles are attached falls, and in so 
doing breaks the connection with the 
battery. A patent recently granted 
not only provides for thus breaking 
the current, but also for starting an 
electric alarm, which gives notice that 
the work is done. Two Smee’s cells 
will generally give a current strong 
enough. But in the best shops, one 
battery runs all the depositing cells, 
and the strength is regulated for each 
cell by means of interposed resistances. 

In order to make the surface of the 
deposited silver bright, a little bisul¬ 
phide of carbon is often added. As a 
general rule, the more slowly silver is 
deposited, the more compact it is. This 
is well shown by the experiment of 
taking an article and submitting it, 
while in the bath, to a strong current 
for a few minutes. It is almost imme¬ 
diately covered with a black coating of 
silver. If this happens to an article 


that is to be plated, the only remedy 
is to remove it by a vigorous application 
of the scratch brush, and to commence 
again; for no good work can be done 
over this black coating. 

Electro-gilding is done in the same 
manner as electro-plating, using a 
solution of cyanide of gold, instead of 
silver, and a gold plate in place of the 
silver. The gilding of the interior of 
cups and similar articles is accom¬ 
plished by placing them upon a metal¬ 
lic plate which is connected with the 
zinc plate of the battery, filling them 
with the gold solution, and then dip¬ 
ping into them a slip of gold which is 
connected with the other pole. A very 
small amount of gold will give a good 
color to a large surface. 


HOW STEEL FILES ARE MADE. 

Files are made of the best English 
cast steel. The rods for the blanks are 
obtained of such sizes as are suited to 
the character of the files to be fur¬ 
nished. The first operation is that of 
forging the blanks from the rods. 
This is done by blacksmiths who must 
be very skillful, quick, and exact work¬ 
men, as the metal must not be heated 
above blood-red temperature. All the 
blanks for each size of the file must be 
exact in length and swedged to the 
proper shape, after which the tangs 
are forged. The next operation is that 
of annealing them, to render them soft 
and ductile. This is done by putting 
them into an annealing oven, or plac¬ 
ing them in a box protected from the 
air by being buried in sand, then heat¬ 
ing them to a red heat, and cooling 
slowly. After this they are ground to 
a smooth face, and are ready for cut¬ 
ting. The burring or cutting of the 
fine grooves on the face of files is 
the most tedious operation connected 








512 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


with their manufacture. This is per¬ 
formed by workmen who require long 
practice and great skill of hand and 
eye to render them experts. They sit 
at work astride of wooden horses, with 
their feet in leather stirrups (endless 
straps), the top of each passing over a 
file, and holding it firmly down on the 
anvil. The blank is held upon a sole 
of pewter resting on an iron block, and 
each operator cuts the burs with a 
short broad chisel held in the left hand, 
and a heavy hammer in his right. 
This hammer is something of a curios¬ 
ity; it resembles a crooked necked 
squash, with a cross slice cut off each 
end, but for all this it is a scientific 
rapper, notwithstanding its uncouth 
appearance. Being very heavy to be 
swung for long periods of time with 
one hand, were it not crooked down¬ 
wards the strain of the blows would 
principally come upon the wrist, 
whereas it is distributed more equalty 
over the whole arm of the operator, 
who commences to cut at the point of 
the blank, and with great dexterity 
shifts the chisel at every blow, and 
raps away until he has cut a whole 
series of angular grooves nearly up to 
the tang. When one series of grooves 
are cut, the operative slacks his stirrups, 
and releases the file. The edge and 
crossbars of files are cut in the same 
manner, and the face of the metal is 
lubricated before each row is com¬ 
menced. The ridge thrown up by each 
cut determines the position of the next, 
and the operator quickly determines 
the spot to strike by the touch of his 
finger, which holds the chisel, and is 
trailed along the surface of the file. 
The largest sizes of files are cut by 
men, the smallest by women and girls. 
The angular grooves of double cut files 
have their faces in the form of numer¬ 
ous rows of fine hard angular teeth. 


It frequently happens thht the face of 
blank files are not uniform in their 
texture as regards hardness. On this 
account some of the grooves require 
an additional rap to form the burr. 
This is a peculiarity which has been 
very difficult to overcome by any of 
the machines which have been em¬ 
ployed to make these simple tools. 

After the files are cut, they are 
ready for tempering, and are prepared 
for this process by a thin coating of a 
composition of salt, brine, flour and 
charcoal dust, and sometimes pounded 
cow’s hoof. This is to protect the 
teeth from being burned and from 
oxydizing when heated. The files are 
heated in a bath of molten lead, which 
is always of a uniform temperature. 
The temperer takes each prepared file 
singly, dips it into the molten lead, 
holds it for a few seconds until it is of 
a red heat, then lifts it out, gives it a 
rap with a lead hammer on a pewter 
anvil to knock off the burned scale, and 
straighten it, if curved, then plunges 
it into a bath of cold salt brine, and it 
is tempered. This process must be 
performed with great tact to avoid the 
curving of the files by the heat, and 
consequent cracking when suddenly 
cooled. After this, the tangs are soft¬ 
ened by dipping them in the molten 
lead and allowing them to cool slowly, 
in order to remove their brittleness. 
The files are next scoured with fine 
sand and water by brushes, then put 
into limewater, and afterwards thor¬ 
oughly washed. They are next dried, 
rubbed over with some oil and turpen¬ 
tine, and are considered finished. Be¬ 
fore being packed for market, each file 
is thoroughly tested by the foreman as 
to its quality of temper and the burr 
on its face. 

Although all the processes of the 
file manufacture are but repetitions of 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


513 


the same operations which are per¬ 
formed every day by the operatives, 
yet these require long practice and tact 
to execute accurately. It has been 
suggested that instead of one, a num¬ 
ber of files might be taken up at once 
by the temperer and submitted to the 
hardening process in order to facilitate 
the operations. It has also been sug¬ 
gested that chisels having a number, 
instead of one edge, might be used by 
the cutters, and several burrs cut with 
one blow of the hammer instead of a 
single one as is now the case. Such 
suggestions have already been acted 
upon experimentally without any 
practical benefit. 

Various machines for cutting files 
have been constructed and put into 
operation. The work which they have 
executed looks well, the burrs being 
beautifully regular, yet such files are 
not equal in quality to those made by 
hand labor, hence the latter have the 
preference and bring the best prices. 
The hand-made files have a sharpness 
of burr which machines have generally 
failed to imitate and yet this appears 
inexplicable, as it seems reasonable 
that machinery might be constructed 
to cut files as well, in every respect, as 
can be done by hand. 

Quite an extensive business is car¬ 
ried on in the re-cutting of worn out 
files, and in the vicinitv of New York 
there are great numbers of small shops, 
where such operations are carried on. 
The old files are first softened by tak¬ 
ing out their temper, then they are 
ground to a smooth face, re-cut, tem¬ 
pered, and finished. 

File-cutting was introduced into our 
country from England, and is now 
mostly conducted by manufacturers 
and mechanics who are natives of that 
country. They have brought to our 
shores all the skill and industry for 


which they are so justly distinguished, 
and they produce files equal in every 
respect to those made in Europe. 


SKINNING AND STUFFING BIRDS. 

The preservation of the skins of 
animals and stuffing them so as to 
preserve their natural appearance, is 
an art requiring considerable skill and 
taste. It is also of great utility in the 
study of natural history, as well as a 
very pleasing pursuit for amateur col¬ 
lectors. 

It is more difficult to properly pre¬ 
pare and mount bird skins than those 
of other animals, as the preservation of 
the plumage in an unruffled and un¬ 
soiled state, is the point to be aimed 
at, and feathers, if broken, are very 
hard to re-adjust properly. 

In killing birds with shot the feath¬ 
ers are very apt to be more or less 
damaged and soiled with blood, which, 
if it be permitted to dry on the plum¬ 
age, will be difficult to remove with¬ 
out some permanent disorder in its 
arrangement. These evils may be in 
a great measure avoided if the sports¬ 
man will attend to the following 
directions: He should take the field- 
provided with a small box of cotton 
wool, a bottle of water, and a small 
shallow dish of some kind to hold a 
small portion of water at need. He 
should also be equipped with some 
small sable brushes, such as are used 
in water color painting, and a short 
piece of stiff wire with the end 
rounded. As soon as he has shot a 
bird he should aim to get it in hand as 
soon as possible, and plug the shot 
holes with cotton to prevent further 
bleeding. In doing this he will find 
the wire above alluded to a very useful 
instrument. When the bleeding is 
stopped, he should next cleanse the 
feathers from the blood which has 









514 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


already flowed, by using the water 
which he carries for the purpose and 
the brushes. If the blood is thus re¬ 
moved before it dries, it can be so 
completely washed off as to leave no 
stain even on the whitest feathers, and 
'at the same time their texture may be 
preserved from damage. Should any 
of the feathers become so much bent as 
to be difficult to straighten, they may 
be restored measurably by soaking in 
hot water. 

Before skinning, the principal di¬ 
mensions of the bird should be taken 
and noted down for reference in mount¬ 
ing. The first incision should be made 
longitudinally backward from the 
lower point of the breast bone. From 
the beginning of the operation to the 
conclusion, all fluids should be con¬ 
stantly absorbed by cotton wool, the 
greatest care being taken that they do 
not flow out and soil the feathers. As 
fast as the skin is separated from the 
body a thin layer of cotton should be 
inserted to prevent its adhering to the 
flesh and for purposes of absorption. 
Through the incision made as directed 
the entire process of skinning must in 
general be performed. When the skin 
is stripped down from the muscular 
portions of the legs, they must be cut 
off on the inside of the skin with scis¬ 
sors or a knife so as to leave the feet 
attached to the skin. The tail is like¬ 
wise cut off on the inside at its 
attachment to the back. The body 
can then be suspended from a hook 
and the skinning proceed toward the 
head by turning the skin inside out. 
When the wings are reached the skin 
should, if possible, be removed as far as 
the joint constituting the elbow, but if 
it is found difficult to do this without 
tearing the skin, the bone may be 
severed as low down as practicable, by 
use of cutting pliers or strong scissors. 


Great care will be needed to avoid 
breaking the delicate membrane which 
constitutes the external ear upon the 
heads of birds which are nearly or 
quite bald. Care is also required in 
manipulating the eyes, the external 
membrane of which ought, if possible, 
to remain unbroken. The brain is 
removed from the skull through incis- 
sions made well back through the roof 
of the mouth. All loose flesh and fat 
about the neck, tail, and legs, should 
be removed from the skin. For this 
purpose the skin on the wings may be 
cut through on the inside, when it 
covers those parts from which the bone 
and flesh could not be removed. The 
parts liable to decompose may then be 
rubbed over on the inside with arsenic, 
or arsenical soap, which will effectually 
prevent decay. 

The skin is now ready to be stuffed, 
which although it seems simple in 
description, requires considerable skill. 
If glass is not used for the eyes, their 
orbits should first be stuffed through 
the mouth with cotton. Next the 
upper parts of the throat should be 
filled with the same material. A roll 
of cotton should now be inserted 
through the first incision, and pushed 
up through the neck to the base of the 
skull. Then the body should be filled, 
during which process the wires for 
supporting the bird when mounted 
should be inserted into the legs, neck, 
and wings. This completes the pro¬ 
cess so far as it can be described in 
words, with the exception of sewing 
up the opening through which the 
stuffing has been performed. This 
requires no special skill to be per¬ 
formed neatly. 

Some slight variations in the method 
are requisite, according to the charac¬ 
ter of the bird. For instance, a very 
large bird may require to have the 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY. OF INFORMATION. 


515 


neck cut off when the skull is reached, 
and the skinning of the head to be 
performed by an incision from the out¬ 
side down the back of the skull. 

In mounting birds there is room for 
considerable display of taste in the 
adjuncts. A branch of the tree which 
the bird most affects, with artificial 
leaves, may be used with good effect as 
a support for the feet. The natural 
beauty of the plumage may be en¬ 
hanced by suitable contrasts of color in 
the lining of the case where they are 
kept. An aquatic bird may be shown 
holding a fish in its mouth, such as it 
commonly obtains for its food, and 
many other fancies will suggest them¬ 
selves to those who wish to excel in 
the art. 

The directions given will, if observed, 
enable any ingenious person after a 
little practice to skin, stuff, and mount 
a bird creditably. 

WATCH OIL. 

This peculiarly limpid oil, used by 
watchmakers to oil the works of 
watches, is drawn from the black- 
fish. There are many millions of 
watches in the world, but a drop of 
this oil goes such a long way that the 
civilized world uses only about two 
hundred gallons yearly. Most of this 
is produced on Cape Cod. 

In preparing this jaw oil the heads 
are tried out carefully and the oil 
refined by boiling it and finally sub¬ 
mitted to a freezing test. 

Two or three men furnish the world’s 
supply of this product; they have es¬ 
tablished their reputations, and con¬ 
trol the market; and this old man 
remarked that the stock on hand was 
now sufficiently great, and he would 
not save any more this year. The oil 
is sold by the producers for from four 
to eight dollars a gallon. 


HOW PAPER COLLARS ARE MADE. 

One hundred and fifty million paper 
collars, it has been estimated, are 
yearly used in the United States; and 
statistics show that even this immense 
number is steadily increasing as im¬ 
provements in the manufacture mul¬ 
tiply. 

The collars are made in two varieties: 
of paper and cloth combined and of 
paper alone. The best materials are 
used in the manufacture of the paper. 
It is supplied in heavy white sheets, 
sixteen by thirty-six inches in dimen¬ 
sions, weighing 125 pounds to the 
ream. On being received in the man¬ 
ufactory, it is sent to the enameling 
room, where each sheet is covered with 
a thin layer of enamel and then placed 
on racks heated by steam pipes until 
thoroughly dry. This work is per¬ 
formed entirely by hand, and the 
enamel mixture applied with an ordi¬ 
nary brush. 

After the sheets have become thor¬ 
oughly dry, they are embossed to 
imitate cloth. To produce this effect, 
muslin is tightly stretched and pasted 
on plates of tin corresponding in size 
to the sheets of paper. Between pairs 
of plates thus prepared the paper is 
laid, about fourteen sheets at a time 
being thus arranged, making a pile of 
alternate layers of paper and tin. The 
whole is then passed between heavy 
steel rollers, the pressure being suffi¬ 
cient to imprint the threads of the 
cloth on the paper, so that a perfect 
fac simile is thus obtained. 

Each sheet is then polished by pass¬ 
ing it over swiftly revolving brushes, 
when it is ready to be transformed into 
collars. The paper is next sent to the 
finishing loft, where, by means of 
movable dies made of steel, with edges 
sharpened so as to penetrate the 









516 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


material readily, the collars are cut out. 
A heap of sheets, about eighty in num¬ 
ber, is arranged under a press, the die 
placed upon them, and the press set in 
motion. A single stroke cuts through 
the paper, and the collars are shaped. 
They are now perfectly flat, destitute 
of button holes, and, besides, must be 
molded before they are ready for 
packing. 

At one end of the loft are large rolls 
of starched muslin, the use of which it 
is at first somewhat difficult to divine. 
A glance at the next process through 
which the collars pass soon affords an 
explanation, for the muslin is seen cut 
up into little elliptical bits called 
“ patches ” which are pasted on the 
extremities and middle of the collar. 
Their object is to give the button 
holes the necessary strength and to 
prevent them tearing out when soaked 
by perspiration. A very ingenious 
machine puts on these patches, cuts 
the button holes, impresses the imita¬ 
tion of stitches on the borders, folds 
the collar, and stamps its size on it, all 
in one motion. 

The collars, as fast as they are 
finished by this machine, are bent or 
molded so as to fit the neck. The 
molding apparatus accomplishes its 
work with astonishing quickness, al¬ 
though it may be fairly considered as 
rivalled in rapidity of motion by the 
girls who pack the collars in the boxes. 
A bundle of a dozen is made up and 
twisted into its receptacle as if by 
magic, each girl packing some 20,000 
collars per day. The last process is to 
label the boxes, place them in cases, 
and the goods are ready for the market. 

The cloth lined collars are the most 
expensive of the two varieties. They 
are made of paper to which muslin, 
either white or colored, is firmly pasted, 
so that no embossing is necessary, and 


are cut out and finished' in the same 
manner as above described. Cuffs and 
false shirt bosoms go through the same 
processes, dies being used of the re¬ 
quired forms. 


WHEELBARROW. 

This invaluable little vehicle is of 
great antiquity. Pictures in old books 
show that it was in use as far back as 
the year 1200. The invention of it 
has been claimed by several persons 
who lived long afterward, but the in¬ 
disputable evidence of these old pic¬ 
tures proves the claims to be unfound¬ 
ed. M. Dupin, a Frenchman, claimed 
the honor when the wheelbarrow had 
been in use for more than four hundred 
years. It has also been accredited to 
the distinguished Florentine painter, 
Leonardo de Vinci, who was in his 
prime in the latter part of the fifteenth 
century, when the wheelbarrow was 
already two hundred years old. There 
are many varieties in use for different 
purposes, all constructed with a view to 
the use for which they are intended. 


STRAIN OF STRINGED INSTRUMENTS. 

The strain of each string on a violin 
is on an average 50 pounds; on large 
string instruments it is more, and on 
an old-fashioned piano it is 100 pounds 
per string; the new style of pianos, 
with heavier strings, are subject to 
double that pull, so that a three¬ 
stringed piano of seven octaves is 
subject to a strain of 200x3x12x7, or 
50,400 or over 25 tons. The way to 
find these numbers is simply to run 
the end of the string, which otherwise 
is wound around a peg or screw, over 
a pulley, and to suspend weights to the 
string, increasing them until the 
required tension or pitch is obtained. 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


517 


MAPS AND CHARTS. 


It is singular that mankind lived so 
long without maps, while they were 
constantly traveling to and from such 
parts of the world as were known to 
them. It is claimed that Anaximander, 
a citizen of Miletus, made the first one, 
about the year 570, B. C. The claim is 
disputed, but on poor grounds. The 
world as then known included only the 
southern part of Asia, southwestern 
Europe, and the north coast of Africa, 
on the Mediterranean sea. About 
seventy years after, the shape and size 
of that sea were correctly defined, and 
the known world spread a little, on its 
borders. Two hundred years after, (300 
B. C.,) the Eastern hemisphere was so 
well known that Europe, Asia and Af¬ 
rica were mapped as grand divisions, 
comprising the world. The names of 
those three continents are curious. 
Europe signifies ivest , and darkness ,— 
showing that the country was thus 
named by people living east of it, who 
saw the setting sun disappear here, and 
darkness follow. Asia has an opposite 
signification, meaning east , and rising. 
The derivation of the name Africa was 
lost in the darkness of antiquity more 
than two thousand years ago. 

One of the greatest difficulties expe¬ 
rienced by ancient map makers was the 
proper division of the continents, espe¬ 
cially between Asia and Africa. 

About 200 B. C., Eratosthenes, the 
founder of the science of geography, 
made an enlarged map. From that 
time until now, new discoveries have 
constantly been made, and new maps 
rendered necessary. 

Sea-charts were first brought to En¬ 
gland by Bartholomew Columbus, a 
brother of Christopher, in 1489. 

Mercator’s atlas, famous as the only 
one which gives the whole world in 


one map, in parallel lines, was first pub¬ 
lished in 1556. 

Hipparchus, of Alexandria, was the 
first to teach geography according to a 
regular system. He started the system 
of ascertaining latitudes and longitudes 
by astronomical observation. He died 
125 B. C. 

The first magnetic chart was made 
by Dr. Holley, in 1701. It contained 
only the Atlantic and Indian oceans. 

SAND AND MUD BATHS. 

Baths of sand or mud have had a 
reputation, more or less deserved, for 
centuries; and at the present day are 
employed to a considerable extent in 
different parts of the world. By the 
former, the inhabitants of the eastern 
shores of the Mediterranean expect 
to cure their rheumatic and scrofulous 
troubles. The process of taking this 
“cure” is very simple; the patient 
buries himself almost completely in 
the hot dry sand, and remains thus, 
some time after a profuse perspiration 
has broken out; the perspiration is 
soon followed by a rash upon the skin, 
which subsides in a few days. 

The little benefit arising from this 
cure is due in the main to the sweat¬ 
ing, which frees the blood from 
impurities through the pores of the 
skin, which later is locally irritated 
and excited to greater action by direct 
contact of the sand. 

But the latter, the mud baths, so 
popular on the continent of Europe, 
among which those of Salzburg, Fran- 
zenbad, and Marienbad in Germany 
have the highest reputation, are really 
more beneficial. They are prepared in 
the following manner: Bog mud is 
thoroughly dried and sifted, then sat¬ 
urated with mineral water, the mixture 
being made so soft that the body can 
sink into it; the temperature is raised 








518 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


to about 112 ° Fahr., and the bath is 
ready. The baths may be either par¬ 
tial or complete, according to the part 
of the body to be treated; but in either 
case, the duration of a single bath is 
from thirty to fifty minutes: after 
which the body is cleansed by a warm 
water douche . They are taken daily, 
early in the morning, until relief is 
obtained. The diseases to which they 
are particularly suitable are some 
kinds of paralysis, muscular rheuma¬ 
tism, and the dull nervous pains which 
follow severe bruises and which are 
called weather pains. In former times 
their efficacy was thought to depend 
upon the large amount of iron and 
salts contained in them, and which 
were absorbed into the blood through 
the pores of the skin. It was even 
supposed that there existed a magnetic 
current in the mud, which acted as a 
strong nervous tonic; but at present, 
the general belief is that the action is 
simply that of a universal poultice, 
giving to the entire surface of the body 
the heat and moisture which we apply 
to a sore finger in the bread and milk. 

Any one who lives near a bog swamp 
can extemporize a bath, almost as 
efficient as those of the celebrated 
watering places, if he have the time and 
patience to make it; but instead of 
mineral water, he can use ordinary 
boiling water or water in which is dis¬ 
solved a quarter of a pound of green 
vitriol and half a pound of rock salt. 
As the heat and moisture are consid¬ 
ered the principal parts of this cure, 
other substances than mud may be 
used, which, although more expensive, 
are yet more cleanly; as, for instance, a 
fine sand or bran, or any material 
which will mix well with water and 
retain the heat for some time. 


Spectacles invented, 1280. 


TO PURIFY TALLOW. 

In order to obtain tallow quite free 
from smell, and to preserve it for a 
long time without becoming rancid, 
the following simple process, says the 
Chemical Review , may be used. The 
fresh tallow is melted in boiling water, 
and when completely dissolved, and 
consequently hot, it is passed through 
a linen filter—it is then boiled along 
with the water and carefully skimmed 
—then rendered solid by cooling and 
washed with water, and lastly separated 
from it carefully by pressure. It 
may be melted at a moderate heat and 
preserved in earthern vessels, covered 
with a bladder, paper, or good closing 
lid. If the linen filter is not thick 
enough to keep other ingredients from 
passing through besides the liquid tab 
low and water, it is necessary to repeat 
the filtration. Tallow thus obtained 
may be used for ordinary food, foi 
pomades by the addition of pure olive 
oil, for salves and plasters by the addh 
tion of white wax, and may be kept 
well preserved for a time, as free from 
smell as when first prepared. 

WHITING AND PARIS WHITE. 

At the Plymouth works, Bergen, N. 
J., four huge grinding mills are con¬ 
stantly running, breaking up the chalk 
and mixing it with water, which is 
constantly flowing in as the chalk 
mixture flows on. On leaving the 
mills, the mixture passes along a series 
of wooden troughs, where the sand, 
which has a greater specific gravity 
than the chalk, is deposited, the chalk 
passing on into the settling pits, of 
which there are twenty-four. Oi 
being taken from the pits, the whiting 
is partially dried on a flooring, under 
which hot flues run. It is then cut up 
into large rough lumps and placed in 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


519 


racks on cars which run round on 
tramways into an immense oven. The 
heat from the flues in this oven is 
greatly increased by an air blast, which 
also carries off the moist exhalations 
from the drying whiting. Twelve 
hours on the heated floor, and twelve 
hours in the oven, thoroughly dries 
the whiting, and it is ready for pack¬ 
ing or the putty factory. The old 
process of drying, first for twenty-four 
hours on chalk stones, and then for 
thirty-six hours on open racks, was not 
only more tedious, but, from the vari¬ 
ations of the temperature, was bad for 
the whiting for some purposes. These 
works turn out about twelve tons of 
whiting a day—between 3,000 and 
4,000 tons a year. 

Paris white, of a fine quality, is used 
for finishing parlor walls, adulterating 
paints, making paper heavier and 
whiter, etc. For this purpose, what is 
called cliff stone, a better and harder 
quality of chalk, is used. Paris white 
is made much on the same principle 
as whiting, only being more carefully 
washed and more slowly dried. Many 
thousands of tons of cliff stone and 
chalk, imported from England, are 
worked up every year. 


PALM LEAFo 

The Boston trade in palm leaf has 
always been large. A good year’s im¬ 
portation is fully 100,000 bundles. The 
leaf is mainly brought from. Manza¬ 
nillo, a seaport on the southeast coast 
of Cuba. 

The origin of the trade was in this 
way: A vessel loaded with mahogany 
and other West Indian goods was dis¬ 
charging her cargo at one of our 
wharves when a prominent merchant 
happening to come to the ship, was 
attracted by the unfamiliar appearance 


of a few bundles of what appeared to 
be husks of some kind. They were 
palm leaves which had been put on 
board by accident or for use as dun¬ 
nage, with no thought of their being 
of value. The merchant, picking up a 
leaf, remarked its elasticity and firm¬ 
ness of texture, and as he stood idly 
braiding the split fibres, the thought 
struck him that it would be an excel¬ 
lent thing to be braided into hats. He 
thought the matter over, engaged a 
cargo, was successful in his venture, 
and laid the foundation of a large 
trade. The great use of the leaves, of 
course, is for hats, the common palm- 
leaf fan being made from the leaf of 
a different species of the tree, a dwarf 
variety. 


CARBONATE OF POTASH. 

In France, carbonate of potash is 
manufactured from the residues of mo¬ 
lasses after fermentation. After taking 
out the sugar, or as much as possible, 
and fermenting the uncrystalized sugar, 
the residuum from the fermentation 
( vinasse ) is evaporated and calcined, 
and the different salts separated in a 
very complicated manner. The princi¬ 
pal product of this manufacture in the 
end is carbonate of potash, an extreme¬ 
ly valuable article; but up to some 
years ago it was not possible to obtain 
that article in sufficient purity by this 
process, particularly owing to the 
presence of the cyanides. The cyan¬ 
ide of potassium was in itself a most 
disagreeable ingredient if it was not 
completely destroyed, and in trying to 
destroy it, the result was that carbon 
was formed in the modification of gra- 
obite, and it was quite impossible to 
burn the potash sufficiently white. It 
had a gray color, and was not market¬ 
able, or rather only marketable at a 









520 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


very low price. The furnaces are cal¬ 
cining furnaces, and are constructed 
rather differently from our carbonating 
furnaces. The working door is exactly 
opposite the firehole, and the fire 
escapes through a flue at the top, just 
above the working door inside. After 
a certain time the salt gets to that 
point that it will be impossible to 
destroy the cyanides, so as to burn out 
the carbon completely, without fluxing 
the salt at the same time, because the 
carbon would be there as graphite, and 
it is quite impossible to burn it out at 
a temperature at which the carbonate 
of potash does not fuse. When it has 
arrived at that stage, the furnace man 
fills his furnace with a thick smoke. 
He then suddenly opens the working 
door, which is right opposite the fire, 
and thus burns the smoke throughout 
the furnace; and it appears as if by a 
kind of infection, perhaps by the local 
heat produced right through the salt 
itself, the cyanide is completely des¬ 
troyed, and also the graphite burnt off. 
The product coming from this process 
is a most beautiful white carbonate of 
potash of great strength. 


MANUFACTURE OF PUTTY. 

Only whiting and linseed oil are 
used; no barytes or other adulteration 
are introduced. The whiting and lin¬ 
seed oil are roughly mixed in wooden 
troughs—two gallons of oil to 100 
pounds of whiting—and are then shov¬ 
eled into the mills, 750 pounds forming 
a batch. The chaser, which is an 
enormous iron wheel revolving hori¬ 
zontally in a pan like a fountain basin, 
is at once set in motion. It gradually 
works the whiting and oil together, 
two scrapers turning the mass up into a 
ridge in the center, on the principle of 
a plow share. In twenty minutes the 


putty is thoroughly kneaded into a pli¬ 
able and lubricated mass, and is ready 
for packing. The daily product of the 
two mills is about 12,000 pounds. The 
putty is packed in ox bladders, tubs 
and barrels; about ten pounds to a 
bladder, 100 pounds to a tub, and 720 
pounds to a barrel. It is amusing to 
watch the workmen stuffing the blad¬ 
ders. They seize a lump of putty and 
stuff it into the bladder with their 
thumbs with astonishing rapidity. A 
bladder is filled and tied in about ten 
seconds. 


DYEING KID GLOVES. 

The dye solutions are brushed over a 
glove drawn smoothly over a wooden 
hand. In order to dye black, the glove 
is brushed after washing it with alco¬ 
hol, dried and brushed with a decoction 
of logwood, left for ten minutes, and 
brushed over once more with logwood. 
After ten minutes the glove is dipped 
into a solution of sulphate of iron, and 
brushed afterwards with warm water. 
If the color is not dark enough, add a 
little fustic or decoction of quercitron 
in the logwood bath. In place of the 
sulphate of iron, the nitrate may be 
better employed. When the glove 
begins to dry, it is rubbed with a little 
Provence oil and talcum, laid between 
flannel and pressed. It is then rubbed 
again with oil and talcum, and drawn 
on a wooden hand. The glove must 
not get black on the inside, conse¬ 
quently none of the dye fluid should 
reach the inside of the glove. Brown 
is dyed by brushing on a decoction of 
fustic, red, and logwood, with a little 
alum. The quantities of dye stuff to 
be used are regulated according to the 
tints. For darkening the color a 
small quantity of solution of sulphate 
of iron is used. Morocco red is pro*' 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


521 


duced by brushing on a decoction of 
cochineal, to which a little salt of tin 
and oxalic acid is added. The tint is 
easily made darker by adding a little 
logwood. Gray is produced by brush¬ 
ing on a decoction of sumach, and sub¬ 
sequent treatment with a weak solution 
of sulphate of iron; greenish gray by 
the addition of fustic and logwood, also 
fustic and indigo carmine, to the de¬ 
coction of sumach. Tim aniline colors 
all fix themselves without any further 
addition by brushing their solutions on 
the glove. In place of the brush a 
sponge may be used where it seems 
suitable. In order to give black a 
pleasing bluish appearance, after the 
dyeing it may be washed with a little 
sal ammoniac. Should the seams in 
the gloves remain white after dyeing, 
they are coated with a paste in which 
a little fat is put. 


TRAIN-DISPATCHING. 


Very few outside of railroad officials 
and employees are aware of the labor¬ 
ious and responsible position of the 
train-dispatcher. Within the last few 
years such changes and improvements 
have been made, that the work of run¬ 
ning trains has been very much sim¬ 
plified. Much depends on the train- 
dispatcher, who sits at headquarters 
and with the aid of a curious chart, at 
a glance is enabled to see the exact 
whereabouts of every train on the road 
at any minute of the day. In minia¬ 
ture he has the entire line before him. 
Dots and pegs of different size and 
shape are used to indicate the different 
trains in motion at the same time. The 
train-dispatcher with the aid of the 
chart and an elaborate timecard is en¬ 
abled to direct operations by telegraph 
with as much absolute knowledge and 


intelligence as he could possibly havt 
were he able to give oral commands in 
a hundred different places at the same 
time. He is supposed to and does know 
the size of each passenger and freight 
train on his divission, the power and 
speed of each engine, the grade of every 
mile of the road and where time can be 
made up when the trains are delayed, 
to the best advantage. Although the 
work is done under the advice of the 
superintendent and manager of the 
road he is often put in charge of his 
particular department and held respon¬ 
sible for the proper management of the 
duties assigned to him, being given a 
a great latitude and left -wholly unham¬ 
pered. As he keeps a record of the 
time each train starts from the end of 
the division, it is constantly under his 
eye and guidance until it arrives at its 
destination. He is not called upon to 
exercise his ingenuity much as long as 
the trains move on time, it is when a 
train meets some unavoidable accident 
or is ditched that the dispatcher finds 
a field for the excercise of his full pow¬ 
ers and shows up to advantage. The 
regular timecard in such emergencies 
is of no account and for the occasion 
he is forced to improvise one. Where, 
how and when the trains shall meet, 
which shall have the right of way, 
where lie on the side track and many 
other matters which arise out of such 
a state of affairs, he is called upon to 
decide. On his knowledge and presence 
of mind depend the lives of perhaps 
hundreds of train men and passengers, 
and a large amount of valuable proper¬ 
ty. To illustrate some of his daily 
duties we will suppose the trains are 
all off time and the train-dispatcher is 
running them by telegraphic orders 
issued by himself. Now put on a 
stretch of track sixty miles long and 
designate where the five trains going 







522 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


south will meet five going north, one 
of the north-bound is a through pas¬ 
senger train with no stops to make and 
can run at a certain rate of speed; an¬ 
other making all the stops is a local 
passenger and can run at a rate of 
speed different from the rest; another 
is a freight with a light load, and still 
another freight with a heavy load. One 
has to climb large hills while another 
has a part of the road where the grades 
are not heavy. Plans have to be formed 
and executed at once to start these 
trains, and many other things taken 
into consideration to keep them going 
without any delay or accidents. Many 
train-dispatchers on prominent roads 
handle from one to two hundred 
trains daily, which fact will give the 
public some faint idea of the importance 
of this position. 


CAMEL’S HAIR. 

It is imported occasionally into the 
United States, in bales, from Persia via 
England, or directly from Russian 
ports, and is mostly used in the manu¬ 
facture of pencils for drawing and 
painting. Camel’s hair is longer 
than sheep’s wool, and often as fine as 
silk. There are three kinds of colors, 
black, red, and gray, the darkest of 
which is considered the most valuable. 
It is said that the hair on a camel 
weighs about 10 pounds. In Bokhara 
the camel is watched while the fine 
hair on the belly is growing. This is 
cut off so carefully that not a fibre is 
lost, and when sufficient has been col¬ 
lected, it is spun into a yarn unequalled 
for softness, and then dyed all manner 
of bright colors, and used chiefly for 
shawls. The Arabs and Persians make of 
camel’s hair, of a less valuable kind, stuffs 
for carpets, tents, and wearing apparel, 
and cloth is made of it in Persia. 


HISTORY OF THE FLUTE. 

The flute under different names and 
forms, has been in use for more than 
four thousand years. It was familiar to 
the Egyptians from a remote period of 
their history, and among the Greeks 
and Romans was a favorite pastoral 
instrument employed also on sacred 
and festive occasions, in military bands 
and at funerals. Its present name is 
derived from the Latin fluta , meaning 
a lampreyan eel, caught in the Sicilian 
waters, whose side is perforated with 
seven holes like the flute. The Egyp¬ 
tian flute was from two to three feet 
long, and was generally played by the 
performer sitting on the ground; while 
that of the Greeks probably did not 
exceed, if it equalled a foot in length. 
At Athens, it was once in great repute, 
but was finally superseded by the lyre, 
the use of which did not distort the 
face, while it allowed the accompani¬ 
ment of the voice. In Thebes, Sparta, 
and other places, however, it contin¬ 
ued a favorite. The Spartan flutists 
were a hereditary order and the Spar¬ 
tan soldiers are said to have marched 
to battle to the sound “of Dorian flutes 
and soft recorders.” The Egyptians 
appear from their ancient pictures and 
sculptures to have blown the instrument 
through a lateral opening near one end 
and to have produced the necessary 
modulations of sound by means of 
holes on the sides; hence their instru¬ 
ment probably differed a little from 
the modern fife. The flute of the 
Greeks and Romans was more in the 
nature of a fife, and was double as well 
as single, being often composed of two 
tubes of reed or wood perforated with 
holes and played together. Until the 
early part of the eighteenth century 
it retained the form of the pipe, and 
was called the English or common 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


523 


flute, and sometimes the flute a bee 
from the resemblance of the mouth¬ 
piece to the beak of a bird. It was 
played in the manner of the clarionet 
and had seven finger holes, but no keys. 
One of the best German flutists of the 
eighteenth century was Quantz, the 
flutist of Frederic II of Prussia. Dev- 
ienne and Berbignia also acquired a 
high reputation in France. Among 
the great flutists of the present cen¬ 
tury in Germany, were Fuerstenan 
who died in 1819, and his son who 
died in 1852. Among celebrated living 
flutists are Theobald Boehm, flutist of 
the king of Bavaria, born about 1802, 
who invented about 1833 a new flute 
known as the Boehm flute; Jean Louis 
Tulon, born in Paris in 1786, and pro¬ 
fessor of the conservatory there; Louis 
Dronet, born in Amsterdam in 1792, 
for some time Tulon’s rival in Paris; 
he has resided since 1831 in Belgium, 
engaged in manufacturing musical in¬ 
struments. The principal flute manu¬ 
factories of the present day are Koch 
and Giegla, Vienna; Clair Godfroy, 
Paris, and Rudall, Rose and Carte, are 
the most noted manufacturers in 
London. 


PATENTS. 

According to the new Patent Law, 
approved July 8, 1870, a patent will 
be granted to any one who has in¬ 
vented or discovered any new and use¬ 
ful art, machine, manufacture, or com¬ 
position of matter, or an} 1 ' new and use¬ 
ful improvement thereof. Whether 
the invention claimed be made by a 
man or a woman, citizen or foreigner, 
a patent is granted in the name of the 
person first discovering and perfecting 
the device. If the inventor die before 
obtaining a patent, his or her legal 
representative can procure it. 


. If inventors unite in any application, 
the patent issues to them jointly. 

If the inventor, before obtaining a 
patent, assign a portion of the right, 
the patent will issue to the inventor 
and purchaser, as assignees, jointly. If 
the whole of the inventor’s right be 
assigned, the patent will issue to the 
assignee, but the assignment must first 
be recorded in the United States Patent 
Office. 

The rules of the Patent Office pre¬ 
scribe that applications for patents 
should be accompanied by a working 
model in cases where the nature of the 
invention admits of one. As a general 
rule this model must not exceed twelve 
inches in length, width, or height. It 
must clearly show every feature of the 
machine or device, which forms the 
subject of a claim for invention; but 
should not include other matter, unless 
necessary to the exhibition of a work¬ 
ing model. 

The applicant for a« patent is re¬ 
quired by the law of 1870 to furnish 
drawings where the nature of the case 
admits of them. 

Caveat. —A caveat consists of a 
specification, drawing, oath, and pe¬ 
tition. 

It sometimes happens that an in¬ 
ventor has conceived a general idea of 
some device, the details of which are 
elaborate and complicated, and which 
he is desirous of perfecting or simplify¬ 
ing before presenting it to the public, 
but to accomplish which requires time 
and repeated experiments. 

The patent laws provide for the in¬ 
formation of such inventors by allow¬ 
ing them to file a general description 
of their devices, the objects and pur¬ 
poses of the same, in the secret archives 
of the Patent Office. This general 
description is called a caveat , and is 
considered a confidential communica^ 







524 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


tion from the inventor to the Commis- 
missioner of Patents. 

The inventor is entitled to a notice 
from the Commissioner of Patents in 
case any person shall apply for a patent 
upon the same or similar device dur¬ 
ing the twelve months that ensue after 
the caveat is filed. 

Only American citizens, or persons 
who have made oath of their intention 
to become such citizens, and have 
resided in the United States one year, 
are entitled to file a caveat. 

It is very generally understood that, 
in order to avoid the operation of laws 
relating to public use of a device before 
application for a patent is made, in¬ 
ventors must regulate their movements 
with profound care and secrecy. This 
is an error. The law, as now defined, 
authorizes the public use and sale of 
inventions for two years prior to the 
application. If, however, during the 
time of such public use, any party be¬ 
sides the inventor shall have made and 
used the same device, the law will 
protect him in the use of such as he 
has made, but not in any further man¬ 
ufacture of the article, after the date of 
the inventor’s patent. 

By the act of Congress, approved 
July 8, 1870, it is provided, that all 
articles made or vended under the pro¬ 
tection of a patent must be marked, by 
affixing thereto the word “ patented,” 
together with the day and year that 
the patent was granted. 

In cases where it is impracticable do 
mark every article, the law provides 
that they may be sold in packages, and 
that the word “ patented,” with the 
date of patent, shall be printed on the 
outside of the packages. 

No damages can be collected for an 
infringement of a patent where the 
inventor fails to comply with these 
rules. 


Stamping or marking the words 
“patented,” “letters patent,” or the 
like, upon any article not patented, 
subjects the offender to a fine of $100 
for each offense. 


The following is the tariff of United 

States fees established by law. 

On every application for a design for 

three years and six months.$10 00 

On every application for a design for 

seven years... 15 00 

On every application for a design for 

fourteen years. 30 00 

On every application for a trade-mark 25 00 

On every caveat. 10 00 

On every application for a patent.15 00 

On issuing each original patent. 20 00 

On filing a disclaimer... 10 00 

On every application for a reissue.... 30 00 
On every additional patent granted on 

a reissue... • 30 00 

On every application for an extension 50 00 

On a grant of every extension. 50 00 

On appeal from a primary examiner to 

examiners-in-chief. 10 00 

On appeal to the Commissioner from 
the examiner-in-chief. 20 00 


According to the new Patent Law 
the final fee on issuing a patent must 
be paid within six months after the 
time at which the patent was allowed, 
and notice thereof sent to the applicant 
or his agent; and if the final fee for 
such patent be not paid within that 
time, the patent will be withheld, and 
the invention therein described become 


public property as against the appli¬ 
cant, unless he shall, within two years 
from the date of the allowance of the 


original application, take the steps 
required to prevent forfeiture. 

In most of cases the fees charged by 
persons who make a business of obtain¬ 
ing patents in United States are as 
follows: 


For preliminary examinations, usually 
no fee. 

For preparing application, specifica¬ 
tion, and all necessary papers, and 
attending to the business until a pat¬ 
ent is allowed, in all ordinary cases 


(drawings excepted).$25 00 

For preparing drawings, the cost there¬ 
of, usually. 5 00 

For preparing and filing caveat. 10 00 


Foreign Patents. —In Great Britian, 




















THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OE INFORMATION. 


525 


patents are granted for fourteen 
years to any person who applies, 
whether he be the inventor or an im¬ 
porter of the invention. A British 
patent extends over Great Britain and 
Ireland only. 

In France, patents have a lifetime of 
fifteen years. Annual fees, $20. 

In Belgium, patents are granted for 
twenty years, the patentee paying a 
small annual fee. 

When foreign patents are desirable, 
the three countries above named gen¬ 
erally afford a better field of operations 
than all others. 

The taking out of a patent in a for¬ 
eign country does not prejudice a pat¬ 
ent previously obtained here, nor does 
it prevent obtaining a patent here 
subsequently. 

The cost of obtaining a patent in 
England, France or Belgium, including 
the agent’s fees are about: 


For England, gold.$250 00 

For France, gold... 70 00 

For Belgium, gold. 50 00 


Canadian Patents. —Under the 
new Canadian Patent Law, citizens of 
the United States can secure patents 
in that country on the same terms as 
resident Canadians. 

If the invention has already been 
patented in this country, application 
must be made within one year from 
the date of the American patent. 

Canadian patents will be granted for 
the terms below mentioned, and the 
fees, including Government, with ex¬ 
penses of preparing the specifications, 
original and duplicate drawings, agency, 
and all charges, are as stated oppo¬ 
site the respective terms, payable in 


United States currency: 

For a patent for five years.$50 00 

For a patent for ten years. 70 00 

For a patent for fifteen years. 90 00 


The applicant may, at the outset, 
have the patent issued for either of the 
above terms of years. 


THE HAY STEEL. 

A new metal, the “Hay Steel”, so- 
called in honor of the inventor, A. T. 
Hay of Burlington, Iowa, has recently 
been put upon the market which seems 
destined to work quite a revolution in 
the iron and steel trade. The process of 
manufacture is peculiar. Iron ore is 
treated in a cupula furnace around 
which is coiled several layers of insulat¬ 
ed wire. The latter is charged with a 
current of electricity from a galvanic 
battery. This makes the cupola and 
its contents the core of an immense 
magnet. Iron ore, fire clay and other 
minerals put into the furnace are sub¬ 
jected to a powerful magnetic action, 
which greatly intensifies the electro¬ 
chemical action, yielding as the pro¬ 
duct a dark metallic substance which 
the inventor uses as a flux or sponge 
in the manufacture of steel, the puri¬ 
fication of iron, welding steel, and 
other processes in metallurgy. The 
sponge, upon analysis, contains silicon, 
aluminum, pure iron &c. It has a 
strong affiinity for sulphur which it 
eliminates and it forms combinations 
with other metals that make it highly 
valuable as a purifier. 

In the manufacture of high grades 
of steel the sponge is added in the 
Bessemer process and the result is a 
quality of steel equal to the best crucib¬ 
le steel at a much less cost of produc¬ 
tion. The Hay steel has been subject¬ 
ed to the most severe tests and has ex¬ 
hibited greater tensile strength, elastic 
limit, elongation, compression and 
uniformity of product than any other 
steel known to the commercial world. 
The first bridge ever built exclusively 
of steel was the Chicago, Alton & St. 
Louis railway bridge across the Missouri 
River at Glasgow, Mo. It was built 
exclusively of Hay steel; every chord, 












TIIE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


52G 


bar, nut and bolt in it is Hay steel, not 
a pound of iron or other steel being 
used. It was built in 1878—9. Since 
then other bridges have been built of 
the same material with the happiest 
results. 

The Hay process is also being used 
in the manufacture of steel rails. The 
sponge, when added to the Bessemer 
steel, makes a rail that is tougher and 
less liable to break under strain, con¬ 
cussion or change of temperature. A 
very high grade of the Hay steel is also 
used for cutlery and tools, and lower 
grades for agricultural implements and 
other purposes where a cheap steel can 
be substituted for iron to advantage. 
It is a valuable metallurgic discovery 
and will work many important changes 
in the mechanic arts. 

THE BLUE LAWS. 


Many who have often heard of the 
Connecticut “ Blue Laws,” have prob¬ 
ably never had an opportunity of perus¬ 
ing that celebrated code. The territory 
now comprised in the State of Connec¬ 
ticut was formerly two colonies — 
Connecticut and New Haven. The 
colony of Connecticut was planted by 
emigrants from Massachusetts and 
Windsor in 1633, and Hartford and 
Wethersfield in 1635-36. The other 
colony, styled by its founders the 
dominion of New Haven, was founded 
by emigrants from England in 1638. 
The two colonies were united in 1665. 
The statutes copied below, from an 
ancient volume relating the history 
of the American colonies, were enacted 
by the people of the “ Dominion of New 
Haven,” and being printed on blue 
paper came to be known as “ Blue 
Laws”: 

The governor and magistrates con¬ 
vened in general assembly, are the 


supreme power, under God, of this 
independent dominion. 

From the determination of the as¬ 
sembly no appeal shall be made. 

The governor is amenable to the 
voice of the people. 

The assembly of the people shall not 
be dismissed by the governor, but shall 
dismiss itself. 

Conspiracy against this dominion 
shall be punished with death. 

Whosoever says there is power and 
jurisdiction above and over this domin¬ 
ion, shall suffer death and loss of 
property. 

Whoever attempts to change or 
overturn the dominion shall suffer 
death. 

Judges shall determine no contro¬ 
versies without a jury. 

No one shall be a freeman or give 
a vote unless he be converted and a- 
member of one of the churches allowed 
in the dominion. 

Each freeman shall swear by the 
blessed God to bear true allegiance to 
this dominion, and that Jesus is the 
only king. 

No Quaker, no dissenter from the 
established worship of this dominion, 
shall be allowed to give a vote for the 
electing of magistrates or any other 
officer. 

No food or lodgings shall be offered 
to Quaker, Adamite or heretic. 

If any person turns Quaker he shall 
be banished, and not suffered to return 
but on pain of death. 

No priest shall abide in the domin¬ 
ion. He shall be banished, and suffer 
death on his return. 

Priests may be seized by any one 
without a warrant. 

No one to cross a river but an au¬ 
thorized clergyman. 

No one shall run on the Sabbath 
day or walk in his garden, or else- 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION 


527 


where, except reverently, to and from 
meeting. 

No one shall travel, cook victuals, 
make beds, sweep house, cut hair or 
shave on the Sabbath day. 

No woman shall kiss her children on 
Sabbath or fasting days. 

The Sabbath shall begin at sunset 
on Saturday. 

To pick an ear of corn growing in a 
neighbor’s garden shall be deemed 
theft. 

A person accused of trespass in the 
night shall be judged guilty, unless he 
clears himself by his oath. 

When it appears that the accused 
has confederates, and he refuses to dis¬ 
close them, he may be racked. 

None shall buy or sell lands without 
permission of the selectmen. 

A drunkard shall have a master ap¬ 
pointed by the selectmen, who are to 
bar him from the liberty of buying and 
selling. 

Whoever publishes a lie to the prej¬ 
udice of his neighbor, shall be set in 
the stocks, or be whipped ten stripes. 

No minister shall keep a school. 

Man stealers shall suffer death. 

Whoever wears clothes trimmed with 
gold, silver or bone lace above Is. per 
yard, shall be presented by the grand 
jurors, and the selectmen shall tax the 
offender £300 estate. 

A debtor in prison, swearing he has 
no estate, shall be let out and sold to 
make satisfaction. 

Whosoever sets a fire in the woods, 
and it burns a house, shall suffer death; 
and persons suspected of this crime 
shall be imprisoned without benefit of 
bail. 

Whosoever brings cards or dice into 
this dominion shall pay a fine of £5. 

No one shall read common prayer 
books, keep Christmas or set days, eat 
mince pies, dance, play cards, or play 


on any instrument of music, except the 
drum, trumpet and Jew’s harp. 

No gospel minister shall join people 
in marriage. The magistrate only shall 
join them in marriage, as he may do it 
with less scandal to Christ’s church. 

When parents refuse their children 
convenient marriages, the magistrates 
shall determine the point. 

The selectmen, on finding children 
ignorant, may take them away from 
their parents and put them in better 
hands at the expense of their parents. 

A man that strikes his wife shall pay 
a fine of £10. 

A woman that strikes her husband 
shall be punished a^ the law directs. 

A wife shall be deemed good evidence 
against her husband. 

No man shall court a maid in person 
or by letter, without first obtaining 
consent of her parents; £5 penalty for 
the first offence; £10 for the second; 
and for the third, imprisonment during 
the pleasure of the court. 

Married persons must live together 
or be imprisoned. 

Every male must have his hair cut 
round according to his cap. 


THE DECLARATION OF INDEPEND¬ 
ENCE. 

WHO SIGNED IT, WHERE BORN, EDU¬ 
CATED, ETC. 

1. John Hancock. Born in 1737 at 
Boston, Mass.; received a collegiate 
education, and following the trade of a 
merchant, was sent to represent Mass. 
He died in Boston, Mass., Oct. 8,1793, 
aged 56. 

2. Josiah Bartlett. BornatAmes- 
bury, Mass., Nov., 1729; received a 
a collegiate education; a physician, re¬ 
presenting N. H. Died at Kingston, 
N. H., May 19, 1795, aged 65. 







528 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 

- "7 


3. William Whipple. BornatKit- 
tery, Me., in 1730; received a common 
school education; representative from 
N. H.; had followed the trades of sailor 
and merchant. Died at Portsmouth, N. 
H., Nov. 28, 1785, aged 55. 

4. Matthew Thornton. Born in 
Ireland, 1714; received an academic 
education; was by profession a phys¬ 
ician; representative from N. H. Died 
at Newbury port, Mass., Jan. 24,, 1803, 
aged 89. 

5. Samuel Adams. Born at Quincy, 
Mass., Sept. 22, 1722; received a col¬ 
legiate education; was a merchant; rep¬ 
resentative from Mass. Died at Boston, 
Oct. 3, 1806, aged 84. 

6. John Adams. Born at Quincy, 
Mass., Oct. 19, 1735; received a col¬ 
legiate education; was by profession a 
lawyer; sent as a representative from 
Mass. Died at Quincy, Mass., July 4, 
1826, aged 91. 

7. Robt. Treat Paine. Was born 
at Boston, Mass., March 12, 1731; was 
a clergyman and lawyer, having early 
received a classical education; was rep¬ 
resentative from Mass. Died at Boston, 
March 11, 1814, aged 83. 

8. Eldrige Gerry. Born at Marble¬ 
head, Mass., July 17, 1744; received a 
collegiate education; engaged in mer¬ 
cantile pursuits; was on the delegation 
representing Mass. Died at Washing¬ 
ton, D. C., Nov. 23, 1814, aged 70. 

9. Stephen Hopkins. Was born at 
Providence, R. I., March 7, 1707; re¬ 
ceived only a common school education; 
a surveyor and merchant; representing 
R. I. Died at Providence, R. I., July 
13, 1785, aged 78. 

10. William Ellery was born at 
Newport, R. I., Dec. 22, 1727; received 
a collegiate education; merchant and 
lawyer, representing R. I. Died at 
Newport, R. I., Feb. 15, 1820, aged 92. 

11. Roger Sherman. Born at New¬ 


ton, Mass., April 19, 1721; common 
school education; a shoemaker, mer¬ 
chant and lawyer; representing Conn. 
Died at New Haven, Conn., July 23, 
1793, aged 72. 

12. Samuel Huntington. Was born 
July 3, 1732, at Windham, Conn.; re¬ 
ceived only a common school education; 
farmer and lawyer; representative from 
Conn. Died at Norwich, Conn., Jan. 5, 
1796, aged 63. 

13. William Williams. Was born 
at Lebanon, Conn., April 8, 1731; re¬ 
ceived a collegiate education, and was 
engaged as a merchant; representative 
from Conn. Died at Lebanon. Conn., 
Aug. 2, 1811, aged 80. 

14. Oliver Wolcott. Born at East 
Windsor, Conn., Nov. 22, 1726; col¬ 
legiate education* representing Conn.; 
was only known as a statesman. He 
died at Litchfield, Conn., Dec. 1, 1797, 
aged 71. 

15. William Floyd. Born at Setau- 
ket., L. I., N. Y. % Dec. 17,1734; received 
a collegiate education; engaged in farm¬ 
ing; represented N.Y. Died at Western- 
ville, N. Y., Aug. 4, 1821, aged 87. 

16. Chris. Livingston. Born at Al¬ 
bany, N. Y., Jan. 15,1716; after receiv¬ 
ing a collegiate education he was en¬ 
gaged as a merchant; represented N. Y. 
Died at York, Penn., June 12, 1778, 
aged 62. 

17. Frans. Lewis. Was born at Lan- 
daff, South Wales; received a liberal 
education; was a merchant; represent¬ 
ing N. Y. Died at New York city, 
Dec. 30, 1803, aged 91. 

18. Lewis Morris. Was born at Har¬ 
lem, N. Y.,in 1726; received a collegiate 
education, and was known as a scientific 
farmer; represented N. Y. Died at Mor- 
risania, N. Y., January, 1792, aged 72. 

19. Rup. Stockton. Born at Prince¬ 
ton, N. J„ Oct. 1, 1730; received a col¬ 
legiate education; engaged in the pro- 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


529 


fession of a lawyer; represented N. J. 
Died at Princeton, N.J., Feb. 28,1781, 
aged 50. 

20. John Wetherspoon. Was born 
at Edinburgh, Scotland, Feb. 5, 1722; 
received a collegiate education; was a 
clergyman; represented N. J. Died at 
Princeton, N. J., Nov. 15,1794, aged 73. 

21. Frans. Hopkinson. Born at 
Philadelphia, Pa., in 1737; his edu¬ 
cation was collegiate; his profession the 
law; represented New Jersey. Died at 
Philadelphia, Pa., May 9, 1791, aged 54. 

22. John Hart. Was born about 
1716 in Hunterdon Co., N. J.; received 
a common school education; a farmer; 
representative from N. J. Died in 1780 
in Hunterdon Co., N. J., aged about 64. 

23. Abra Clark. Born Feb. 15,1726‘ 
at Elizabeth, N. J.; education, common 
school; was known as the chair manu¬ 
facturer, lawyer and counsellor; was 
sent as a representative from N. J* 
Died at Rahway, N. J., Sept. 15, 1794‘ 
aged 68. 

24. Robert Morris. Born in Lan¬ 
cashire, England, January, 1733; a 
common school education; was a mer¬ 
chant ; representing Pa. Died at Phila¬ 
delphia, May 8, 1806, aged 73. 

25. Benjamin Rush. Born at Phila¬ 
delphia, Dec. 24, 1745. After he had 
finished his collegiate education he 
studied and engaged in the practice of 
medicine; represented Pa. Died at Phil¬ 
adelphia, Pa., May 8, 1803, aged 67. 

26. Benjamin Franklin. Was born 
at Boston, Mass., Jan. 17, 1706; re¬ 
ceived a common school education; was 
a printer and philosopher; representa¬ 
tive from Pa. Died at Philadelphia, 
April 17, 1790, aged 84. 

27. John Morton. Was born at 
Chester, Pa., in 1724; received a home 
education; engaged in the pursuits of 
farmer and surveyor; from Pa. Died 
at Chester, Pa., 1777, aged 53. 


28. George Clymer. Born at Phila¬ 
delphia, June 10, 1739. After complet¬ 
ing a college course he engaged in mer¬ 
cantile pursuits; was elected to repre¬ 
sent Pa. Died at Morrisville, Pa., June 
23, 1813, aged 74. 

29. Joseph Smith. Born in Ireland 
in 1715; received a liberal education, 
(i. e., classical but not a graduate); rep¬ 
resenting Pa.; he was a surveyor and 
lawyer. Died at York, Pa., July 11, 
1806, aged 89. 

30. George Taylor. Was born in 
Ireland in 1716; had a common school 
education; engaged as manufacturer of 
iron; was elected as a representative 
from Pa. Died at Easton,Pa., Feb. 23, 
1781, aged 65. 

31. James Wilson. Was born in Scot¬ 
land in 1742. He received a classical 
education, and engaged in the prac¬ 
tice of the law; representative from 

Pa. He died in Eatonton, N. C., Aug. 
28, 1798, aged 55-J- years. 

32. George Ross. Born at Newcastle, 
Del., in 1730; received an academic 
education, and engaged in the prac¬ 
tice of the law. Died at Lancaster, Pa., 
July 15, 1799, aged 69. He was of the 
Pa. delegation. 

33. Casar Rodney. Born at Dover, 
Del., in 1730; education liberal; by pro¬ 
fession a lawyer; elected to represent 
Del. Died near Dover, Del., in 1783, 
aged 53. 

34. George Reade. Born in Cecil 
Co., Maryland, Sept. 18, 1734; received 
a classical education, and engaged in 
the practice of the law; elected to 
represent Del. Died at Newcastle, Del., 
in 1783, aged 53. 

35. Thomas M. Keap. Was born at 
Chester, Pa., Nov. 19, 1734; education 
academic; by profession a lawyer; 
elected to represent Del. Died at 
Philadelphia, Pa., May 8,1806, aged 73. 

36. Samuel Chase. Born in Sum- 








530 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


merset Co., Md.; education liberal; a 
lawyer by profession; of the Md. dele¬ 
gation. Died at Baltimore, Md., June 
19, 1811, aged 70. 

37. William Paca. Native of Hart¬ 
ford Co., Md. Bom Oct. 31,1740; after 
completing a college education studied 
law, and was elected as a member of the 
Md. delegation. Died at Annapolis, 
Md., 1799, aged 59. 

38. Thomas Stone. Born at Pone- 
ton, Md., March, 1743; liberal edu¬ 
cation; lawyer, representing Md. Died 
at Alexandria,Ya., Oct. 5, 1787, aged 44. 

39. Charles Carroll, of Carrollton. 
Born at Annapolis, Md., Sept. 20,1737; 
education, collegiate; by profession a 
lawyer of the Md. delegation. Died at 
Carroll’s Manor, Md., Nov. 14, 1832, 
aged 95. 

40. George Wythe. Born in Eliza¬ 
beth City Co., Ya., in 1726; received his 
education from his “mother;” a lawyer 
by profession; was of the Ya. delegation. 
Died at Richmond, Ya., June 8, 1806, 
aged 80. 

41. Richard Henry Lee. Was a na¬ 
tive of Westmoreland Co., Ya. Born 
June 20, 1732; received a liberal educa¬ 
tion; studied and was engaged in the 
practice of medicine when elected as a 
representative from Ya. Died at Chan- 
tilla, Westmoreland Co., Ya., June 19, 
1794, aged 62. 

42. Thomas Jefferson. Born April 
2, 1743, in Albemarle Co., Ya.; col¬ 
legiate education; lawyer; representa¬ 
tive from Ya. Died at Montecello, 
Albemarle Co., Ya., July 4, 1826. 

43. Benjamin Harrison. Charles 
‘ City Co., Ya., was the place, and the 

time of his birth is not known; at the 
time of his election as one of the repre¬ 
sentatives of Ya. he was engaged in 
the business of a planter. He died near 
Berkley, Charles City Co., Ya., April, 
1791, aged about 74. 


44. Thomas Nelson, Jr. Was born 
at Yorktown, Ya., Dec. 26, 1728; re¬ 
ceived a collegiate education; a planter; 
representative from Ya. Died near 
Yorktown, Ya., June 4,1789, aged 50. 

45. Francis Lightfoot Lee. Born 
in Westmoreland Co., Ya., Oct. 14, 
1734. His education was liberal; he 
was a planter and lawyer of the dele¬ 
gation from Ya. Died in Richmond 
Co., Ya., 1797, aged 63. 

46. Carter Blackstone. Was born 
in King and Queen Co., Ya., Sept. 10, 
1736; after receiving a liberal education 
he engaged in merchandising; was No. 
7, on the roll of delegates from Ya. 
Died at Richmond, Ya., Oct. 10, 1797, 
aged 61. 

47. William Hooper. A native of 
Boston, Mass. Born June 17, 1742; 
education collegiate, a lawyer, repre¬ 
senting N. C. Died at Hillsborough, 
N. C., Oct. 1790, aged 48. 

48. Joseph Hews. Was born at 
Kingston, N. J., in 1730; his education 
was liberal: merchant; delegation of 
N. C. Died at Philadelphia, Pa., while 
in attendance as a member of Congress, 
Nov. 10, 1789, aged 49. 

49. John Penn. A native of Caro¬ 
line Co., Ya. Born May 17, 1741: was 
self-educated; a lawyer by profession; 
representative from N. C. Died at 
Granville, N. C., Sept. 1788, aged 47. 

50. Edward Rutledge. Born at 
Charleston, S. C., Nov., 1749; was a 
liberally educated lawyer; a member of 
the S. C. delegation. Died at the place 
of his birth, Jan 23,1800, aged 50. 

51. Thomas Hayward, Jr. Was born 
in St. Luke’s Parish, S. C., in 1746; 
academic education; a lawyer; repre¬ 
senting S. C. Died near Charleston, 
March, 1809, aged 63. 

52. Thomas Lynch, Jr. Born in 
Prince Geo. Parish, S. C.; received a 
collegiate education; a planter of the 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


531 


delegation from S. C. Lost at sea late 
in 1779, aged 30. 

53. Arthur Middleton. Was born 
on Ashley River, S. C., in 1743; edu¬ 
cation classical; a planter from S. C. 
Died near Charleston, S. C., Jan. 1, 
1787, aged 44. 

54. Button Gwinnett. Born in 
Eng., in 1732; was the recipient of a 
liberal education, and, at the time of 
his election as one of the delegates 
from Ga., was a merchant. He was 
killed in a duel near Savannah, Ga., 
May 27, 1777, aged 45. 

55. Lyman Hall. A native of Conn. 
Born in 1731; was in possession of a 
classical education, and was engaged 
in the practice of medicine when sent 
as one of the representatives from Ga. 
He died in Burke Co., Ga., in 1791, 
aged 60. 

56. George Walton, Born in Fred¬ 
erick county, Va., in 1740; was self- 
educated; followed the business of a 
carpenter, then of a lawyer; was a rep¬ 
resentative from Ga. Died at Augusta, 
Ga., Feb. 2, 1804, aged 64. 

Charles Carroll, who died Novem¬ 
ber 14, 1832, was the last survivor of 
the signers, and on the 4th of July, 
1828, then over 90 years of age, threw 
the first shovel of earth on the Balti¬ 
more and Ohio R. R., amid appropriate 
and imposing ceremonies. 

USES OF WASTE PAPER. 

Few housekeepers are aware of the 
many uses to which waste paper may 
be put. After a stove has been black¬ 
ened, it can be kept looking very well 
for a long time by rubbing it with 
paper every morning. Rubbing with 
paper is a much nicer way of keeping 
the outside of a teakettle, coffeepot or 
teapot bright and clean than the old 
way of washing it in suds. Rubbing 
them with paper is also the best way 


of polishing knives and tinware after 
scouring them. If a little soap be held 
on the paper in rubbing tinware and 
spoons, they shine like new silver. 
For polishing mirrors, windows, lamp 
chimneys, etc., paper is better than 
dry cloth. Preserves and pickles keep 
much better if brown paper instead of 
cloth is tied over the jar. Canned 
fruit is not apt to mould if a piece of 
writing paper, cut to fit each can, is 
laid directly upon the fruit. Paper is 
much better to put under carpet than 
straw. It is thinner, warmer, and 
makes less noise when one walks over 
it. Two thicknesses of paper placed 
between the other coverings on a bed 
are as warm as a quilt. If it is neces¬ 
sary to step upon a chair, always lay 
a paper upon it, and save paint and 
woodwork from damage. 


ORIGIN OF THE WATER-CURE. 

The water-cure, or hydropathy, 
owes its origin to the fertility of in¬ 
vention of a Silesian peasant, Vineenz 
Pnessnitz. Having, at the age of 
thirteen, sprained his wrist, young 
Priessnitz intuitively applied it to the 
pump; and afterward, to continue the 
relief thus obtained, he bound upon it 
an umschlag , or wet bandage. Re wet¬ 
ting this as it became dry, he reduced 
the inflammation, but excited a rash on 
the surface of the part. Soon after, 
having crushed his thumb, he again 
applied the bandage and the pain once 
more subsided, but the rash reappeared. 
He inferred that the rash indicated an 
impure blood; and this conclusion was 
strengthened by the result of experi¬ 
ments which he was induced to try 
upon injuries and ulcers in the case of 
some of his neighbors, since the rash in 
some instances appeared after the 
treatment, and in others did not. Thus 









532 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 




he was led to frame for himself a hu¬ 
moral pathology of all diseases, and a 
doctrine of the elimination of morbific 
matters by “crisis.” According to 
this view, the cure of diseases is to be 
effected by favoring the activity of 
those organs through which the puri¬ 
fication of the system is carried on, 
and, through a regulated and pure 
dietary and correct regimen, prevent¬ 
ing further morbid accumulations. In 
his nineteenth year, being run over by 
a cart, Priessnitz had some ribs broke, 
and received severe bruises; on learn¬ 
ing that the doctors pronounced his 
case hopeless, he tore off their band¬ 
ages, and recovered under the renewed 
application of the umschlag, and re¬ 
placed the ribs inflating the lungs 
while pressing the abdomen against 
a window-sill. 


PAPIER MACHE. 


Articles manufactured and sold un¬ 
der this head may be said to owe 
their manufacture almost entirely to 
busy Birmingham, France and Ger¬ 
many having all but entirely failed in 
doing anything in this branch of fancy 
and useful industry. In 1872 Mr. 
Clay is credited with patenting the 
making in paper of panels for car¬ 
riages and other vehicles, chimney- 
pieces, etc. The finest goods are 
formed by joining together sheets of 
soft blotting-like paper. A paste of 
flour and glue is used for this purpose, 
on a metal model of the shape of the 
article required to be turned out. Like 
all goods of the japanned kind, the 
next process is heating, in an oven of 
100 degrees of temperature. After 
this, come rasping and dipping in lin¬ 
seed oil and tar. Heating follows again, 
with more rasping and varnishing. 
After these operations the artist’s hand 


comes in, and frequently, pearl shell 

and gem inlaying. The pearl is in¬ 
troduced when the lampblack and tar 
varnish are used. As those of us will 
know who keep our eyes on the look¬ 
out for fine art bargains, there are 
papier mache trays of a generation 
gone by, which bear upon them the 
impress of painters of high genius, and 
which would now fetch hundreds of 
times their original cost. 

ASBESTOS. 

Asbestos, or amianthus is a min¬ 
eral of a white or greenish white color, 
found in dense heavy blocks capable of 
being divided into fibres of greater or 
less fineness and length, and resembling 
hair silk; it is smooth and unctuous to 
the touch, and like plumbago, these 
qualities are available for lubricating or 
anti-friction purposes. The mineral is 
extensively distributed, but much of it 
is coarse, discolored or in a disintegrated 
condition, which renders it unservice¬ 
able for any purposes to which asbestos 
has yet been applied. The finest beds 
are in Corsica and Italy, but a very fair 
article is found extensively in Canada, 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and 
other places. Efforts to utilize this 
mineral were early made in the historic 
period, and one of the first applications 
was in the manufacture of incombusti¬ 
ble fabric. For this purpose vegetable 
filaments were combined with the min¬ 
eral fibre, to give strength and consist¬ 
ency during manipulation, the vegeta¬ 
ble fibre being burned away after the 
formation of the fibre. It had many 
uses among the ancients. Herodotus 
refers to cloth made of it by the Egypt¬ 
ians, Varro Strabo and Pliny mention 
its uses for paper napkins, socks and 
handkerchiefs. Shrouds of asbestos of 
the time of the Roman Emperors have 
been discovered, and are in the muse- 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


533 


urns of the Vatican and of Naples. As¬ 
bestos and animal or vegetable fibre, 
have constituted the basis of many pat¬ 
ents, among which is one to Israel Jen¬ 
nings, in 1828, for its use in packing 
for pistons, or piston /ods, joints, etc. 
It was also used for safe linings, in 1834. 
Also, an English patent of 1857, de¬ 
scribes a lampwick of silk and asbestos, 
woven together. Large quantities are 
used for roofing, and many other pur¬ 
poses. 


HOW THERMOMETERS ARE MADE. 

The word thermometer, as every¬ 
body knows, of course, means “heat 
measurer,” and yet the word, in its 
etymological signification, conveys 
what is, or, at least, may be, an erro¬ 
neous notion of the actual results 
obtained by means of this useful and 
interesting little instrument. That 
heat should be accurately measured, 
implies that we should be able to start 
from zero, or no heat. The zero upon 
our ordinary Fahrenheit thermome¬ 
ters is only thirty-two degrees below 
the freezing point of water, and this 
temperature, as is demonstrated by the 
use of instruments capable of indicat¬ 
ing a relatively very low degree, is still 
as evidently heat, and a good deal of 
heat, though not so much as that of 
our scorching July days. We have no 
more authority for saying that the 
lowest degree registered closely ap¬ 
proaches the lowest, in the nature of 
things possible, than we have for as¬ 
serting, that the highest degree at¬ 
tained or measured is the highest 
degree possible. All that the ther¬ 
mometer does, is, assuming that the 
cause is proportional to the effect, to 
indicate by a regularly adjusted scale, 
the expansion and contraction of a 
certain substance—for instance, alcohol 


or mercury—and from this expansion 
and contraction, we infer that the 
cause or condition of it—that is, the 
increase or decrease of heat is propor¬ 
tional to the result. It would not be 
erroneous to say, that the thermometer 
measures the relative increase or de¬ 
crease of temperature, but it does not, 
and can not, measure heat itself. Yet 
the uses of the instrument are as 
various and beneficial as if heat were 
as absolutely measured, as we can 
measure the pressure of the air by the 
barometer, or the specific gravities of 
liquids by means of the hydrometer. 
All results, dependent exclusively upon 
heat, will be uniform, for the same 
degree of heat; and, using this law, we 
can reason from one result to another, 
the results, of course, having been first 
obtained by experiment, and regis¬ 
tered for use. 

As an illustration, having once dis¬ 
covered and noted the fact, that water 
boils in the open air when the mercury 
of a thermometer, immersed in it, has 
expanded to the point of 212° on the 
scale, we may always count on the 
concomitance of these results, the 
boiling of water and the registered 
expansion of the mercury, except 
under the following circumstances, 
which, so far as we know, have yet 
received no explanation. After a ther¬ 
mometer has been exposed for some 
weeks to the ordinary temperature of 
the air, if it be suddenly exposed to the 
temperature of boiling water, its freez¬ 
ing point will often be found to have 
lowered from one to two degrees. This 
has been observed in some of the 
standard thermometers of the Royal 
Society, London, and by various experi¬ 
menters. It is sometimes two or three 
weeks before the freezing point corres¬ 
ponds again with that on the scale. 

The determination of the tempera- 








534 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ture at which different physical results 
take place is of incalculable advantage 
to science and the arts, notwithstand¬ 
ing what has already been said, that 
the thermometer really does not meas¬ 
ure heat at all. 

A mercurial thermometer is a very 
simple instrument. A small glass tube, 
with a bulb at one end, containing 
mercury, and a graduated scale, con¬ 
stitute all that is essential to it, yet in 
this, as in many other cases, simplicity 
begets difficulty. To make this simple 
combination perform its duty accu¬ 
rately, is by no means an easy matter. 
The first difficulty met with, is the 
want of uniformity in the diameters of 
the bores of different tubes, and the 
varying size of the bore in almost every 
tube. It is scarcely possible ever to 
find one the caliber of which is the 
same throughout its length, and, if so 
found, it is the result of pure accident. 
It is obvious, therefore, that unless 
some means of eliminating the errors 
which would arise from this source, be 
adopted, nothing like accuracy can be 
expected in the indications of the in¬ 
strument. As the character of the 
bore cannot be altered, the desired 
result must be obtained in another way. 

The method employed to obviate this 
difficulty is called “calibration. 11 Tubes 
are selected tolerably free from imper¬ 
fections, and a column of mercury, of 
one inch or less in length is introduced 
into it. The tube is then attached to 
the frame of a dividing engine, and put 
in connection with flexible rubber 
bags, to which pressure is applied, and 
regulated by screws. The air pressure 
in one bag being reduced, while it is 
increased in the other, the mercury 
column may be forced to and held at 
any part of the tube. 

The mercury being thus brought to 
the portion of the tube where the grad¬ 


uation is proposed to commence, the 
exact position of one end of the col¬ 
umn is marked upon the tube, a mi¬ 
croscope with cross wires being em¬ 
ployed to aid the eye of the operator in 
performing the operation with exact¬ 
ness. By means of the rubber bags, 
the mercury is again forced along until 
the end of the column, where the first 
mark is made, is brought under the 
microscope cross wires, placed at the 
other end and so on throughout the 
entire length intended to be graduated. 
The varying lengths of the column 
which are accurately measured in the 
different positions are recorded, and 
indicate the variations in the caliber of 
the tubes. A permanent mark is made 
at the end, as at the beginning of the 
calibration. 

It will be seen, that if the spaces 
successively occupied by the mercury 
be divided into an equal number of 
equal parts, any one of these parts will 
indicate a corresponding increase of 
volume, although the bore of the tube 
may vary in its diameter. 

The required dimensions of the bulb 
are found, approximately, by weighing 
a measured length of the mercurial 
column, and computing the capacity of 
the bulb from the known expansion of 
mercury and its specific gravity. 

The bulb may be formed upon the 
tube previous to the calibration, or 
afterwards attached. In the former case, 
however, the thermometers have their 
scale divided after the determination of 
the freezing and boiling points, and no 
tubes can be used except such as are 
found to be approximately perfect. 
In the latter case, the arbitrary scale, 
as marked from the calibration, may 
be reduced after the determination of 
the freezing and boiling points into 
the Fahrenheit scale, by the applica¬ 
tion of a simple algebraic formula. 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


535 


The boiling point is obtained by 
placing the bulb in steam having the 
same elasticity as the atmosphere, a 
peculiar apparatus, devised by Reg- 
nault, being generally employed for 
the purpose. 

The glass tubes, as received, are 
about a yard long. A boy nicks them 
with a hard steel knife, and breaks 
them the length required. The bores, 
which are flat; are compared, by means 
of a lens, with those of ten standard 
sizes, and the tubes assorted accord¬ 
ingly. They are then passed to the blow¬ 
pipe table. Each glass-blower has a 
foot-bellows, and uses an oil lamp. 
Melting the glass at one end of a 
tube, he blows it into a bulb by press¬ 
ing the sides of a hollow India-rubber 
ball attached to the other, proportion¬ 
ing the size of the bulb to the bore of 
the tube, and ascertaining the size by 
using a pair of callipers. While the 
bulb is yet hot the tube is inserted in 
mercury, which, as the bulb cools, rises 
and partly fills it. The tube is then 
withdrawn and a short India-rubber 
tube attached at its open end. Into 
this mercury is poured; that in the bulb 
is boiled to expel the air, which rises 
up through the mercury in the India- 
rubber tube, and an atmosphere of the 
vapor of mercury now fills the glass 
tube and bulb. As this condenses, the 
mercury in the India-rubber tube takes 
its place, when this tube, without any 
mercury remaining in it, is removed. 
The bulb is now warmed, and the open 
end of the glass tube hermetrically 
sealed. The bulb and a portion of the 
tube are immersed in melting ice, and 
the height of the mercury marked; 
they are then transferred to a bath at 
62 degrees Fahrenheit, and the height 
marked; next, to a bath at 92 deg. 
Fahrenheit, and the height again 
marked. The lengths of the three 


spaces of thirty degrees each are now 
carefully measured. If they are ex¬ 
actly equal, the bore is assumed to be 
uniform and the degrees laid off on 
the brass scale of the thermometer are 
all made of the same length. If the 
spaces of thirty degrees each are not 
found to be exactly equal, then, by 
means of a highly ingenious dividing 
engine, the degrees on the scale are 
made to increase in length as the cali¬ 
ber of the tube diminishes. When the 
plate has been divided, and the figures 
and letters punched, it is passed, later¬ 
ally, between rollers, to remove the 
burr left by tools. Were it rolled 
lengthwise, the accuracy of the divid- 
’ ing would be impaired. The plate is 
then silvered and lacquered, the glass 
tube attached, and the whole slidden 
into the well-known japanned tin case. 


ORIGIN OF BRANDY. 

Brandy began to be distilled in 
France about the year 1313, but it was 
prepared only as a medicine, and was 
considered as possessing such marvel¬ 
lous strengthening and sanitary pow¬ 
ers that the physicians named it “ the 
water of life,” (Veau de vie,) a name 
it still retains, though now rendered 
by excessive potations, one of life’s 
most powerful and prevalent destroy¬ 
ers. Raymond Lully, a disciple of 
Arnold de Villa Nova, considered this 
admirable essence of wine to be an 
emanation from the Divinity, and that 
it was intended to re-animate and pro¬ 
long the life of man. He even thought 
that this discovery indicated that the 
time had arrived for the consum¬ 
mation of all things — the end of the 
world. Before the means of deter¬ 
mining the true quantity of alcohol 
in spirits were known, the dealers were 
in the habit of employing a very rude 






536 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


method of forming a notion of the 
strength. A given quantity of the 
spirits was poured upon a quantity of 
gunpowder in a dish and set on fire. 
If at the end of the combustion, the 
gunpowder continued dry enough, it 
exploded, but if it had been wetted by 
the water in the spirits, the flame of 
the alcohol went out without setting 
the powder on fire. This was called 
the proof. Spirits which kindled gun¬ 
powder were said to be above proof. 
From the origin of the term “ proof,” 
it is obvious that its meaning must 
at first have been verv definite. It 
could serve only to point out those 
spirits which are too weak to kindle 
gunpowder, but could not give any 
information respecting the relative 
strength of those spirits which were 
above proof. Even the strength of 
proof was not fixed, because it was 
influenced by the quantity of spirits 
employed — a small quantity of weaker 
spirits might be made to kindle gun¬ 
powder, while a greater quantity of a 
stronger might fail. Clarke, in his hy¬ 
drometer, which was invented about 
the year 1730, fixed the strength of 
proof spirits on the stem at the spe¬ 
cific gravity of 0.920 at the tempera¬ 
ture of 60 °. This is the strength 
at which proof spirits is fixed in Great 
Britain by act of Parliament, and at 
this strength it is no more than a 
mixture of 49 pounds of pure alcohol 
with 51 pounds of water. Brandy, 
rum, gin and whiskey contain nearly 
similar proportions. 


EFFECT OF CHARCOAL ON FLOWERS. 

A horticulturist in England, pur¬ 
chased a rose bush full of promising 
buds—the flowers, however, were of a 
faded hue. He covered the earth in 
the pot about an inch thick with pul¬ 


verized charcoal, and was surprised, 
some days afterward, to find the 
blooms of a fine lively rose color. He 
repeated the experiment another sear 
son with the same result. He then 
tried the powdered charcoal upon 
petunias, and found that both the 
white and violet colored flowers were 
equally sensitive to its action. It 
always gave great vigor to the red or 
violet colors of the flowers, and the 
white petunias became veined with red 
or violet tints; the violets became cov¬ 
ered with irregular spots of a bluish or 
almost black tint. Many persons who 
admired them thought they were 
choice new varieties from the seed. 
Yellow flowers appear to be insensible 
to the influence of charcoal. 


MILLING. 

Mills for pounding or grinding corn 
are of the highest antiquity. We read 
in the Scriptures that Abraham caused 
cakes to be baked for his guests, of the 
finest meal; and that the manna was 
ground like corn. The earliest instru¬ 
ment used for this purpose seems to 
have been the mortar, which was re¬ 
tained a long time, even after the in¬ 
vention of mills properly so called, 
because these, perhaps at first were not 
attended with much superior advant¬ 
age. It appears then, in the course of 
time, the mortar was made rigid and 
the pestle notched at least at the bot¬ 
tom, by which means the grain was 
rather grated than pounded. A pas¬ 
sage of Pliny, not yet sufficiently 
cleared, make this conjecture probable. 
When a handle was added to the top of 
the pestle that it might be more easily 
driven round in a circle, the mortar 
was converted into a hand-mill. Such 
a mill was very little different from 
those used at present by apothecaries, 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


537 


painters, potters and other artists for 
grinding coarse bodies, such as cloves, 
glass, chalk, etc. There is reason to 
suppose, that in every family there 
was a mill of this kind. Moses forbade 
them to be taken in pawn; for that, 
says he, is the same thing as to take a 
man’s life to pledge. Michaelis on 
this passage observes that a man could 
not then grind, and consequently 
could not bake bread for the daily use 
of his family. Grinding was at first 
the employment of the women and 
particularly of the female slaves, as it 
is at present among uncivilized nations 
and must therefore have required little 
strength, but afterwards the mills were 
driven by bondsmen, around whose 
neck was placed a circular machine of 
wood so that these poor wretches could 
not put their hands to their mouths, or 
eat of the meal. In the course of time 
shafts were added to the mill that it 
might be driven by cattle which were, 
as at present, blindfolded. The first 
cattle-mills had perhaps only a heavy 
pestle like the hand-mills; but it must 
have been soon remarked that the 
labor would be more speedily accom¬ 
plished if instead of the pestle, a large 
cylindrical stone should be employed. 
It is thought however, that the first 
cattle-mills had not a spout or a trough 
as ours have at present; at least the 
hand-mills which Tournefort saw at 
Nicaria and which consisted of two 
stones, had neither; but the meal 
which issued from between the stones 
through an opening made in the upper 
one, fell upon a board or table, on 
which the lower stone, that was two 
feet in diameter, rested. The upper 
mill-stone was called meta or turbo , 
and the lower one cattilus. Meta sig¬ 
nified also a cone with a blunt apex; 
and it has on that account been con¬ 
jectured that corn was at first rubbed 


into meal by rolling over it a conical 
stone flattened at the end in the same 
manner as painters at present make 
use of a grinding-stone, and it is be¬ 
lieved that the same name was after¬ 
wards given to the upper mill-stone. 
Niebuhr found in Arabia beside hand- 
mills, some grinding-stones which 
differed from those used by us in their 
consisting not of a flat but of an ob¬ 
long hollow stone or trough with a 
pestle which was not conical, but 
shaped like a spindle thick in the mid¬ 
dle and pointed at both ends. In this 
stone, the corn after being soaked in 
water, was ground to meal and then 
baked into cakes. The remains of a 
pair of old Roman mill-stones were 
found in the beginning of the last cen¬ 
tury at Adel in Yorkshire. One of the 
stones was twenty inches in breadth; 
thicker in the middle than at the edges 
and consequently, convex on one side. 
The other was of the same form, but 
had that thickness at the edges which 
the other had in the middle, and some 
traces of notching could be observed 
upon it. Water-mills appear to have 
been introduced in the time of Mithri- 
dates, Julius Caesar, and Cicero. Strabo 
relates that there was a water-mill 
near the residence of Mithridates and 
some have ascribed the honor of the 
invention to him; but there is no 
doubt that water-mills were, at that 
period known at least in Asia. The 
most certain proof that Rome had 
water-mills in the time of Augustus, is 
the description which has been given 
of them by Vitruvius. He says that 
the ancients had wheels for raising 
water which were driven by being trod 
upon by men, and that condemnation 
to these machines was a punishment. 
And the pretty epigram of Antipater: 
Cease your work, ye maids, ye who 
labored in the mill; sleep now, and 





538 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


let the birds sing to the ruddy morn¬ 
ing; for Ceres has commanded the 
water-nymphs to perform your task, 
these obedient to her call throw them¬ 
selves in the wheel, force round the 
axle-tree, and by these means the 
heavy mill. Palladius speaks with 
equal clearness of water-mills which he 
advises to be built on possessions that 
have running water, in order to grind 
corn without men or cattle. In the 
year 319 Constantine ordered that all 
the slaves condemned to the mills 
should be brought from Sardinia to 
Rome. In the year 1332 one Bartolo¬ 
meo Yerde proposed to the Venetians 
to build a wind-mill. In the year 1393 
the city of Spires caused a wind-mill to 
be erected, and sent to the Netherlands 
for a person acquainted with the method 
of grinding by it. There was a mill 
built at Schoonhoven in 1450 and 
also one at Enkhuisen in 1452, which 
were at first driven by horses, and 
afterwards by wind. It is probable 
that in the early ages men were satis¬ 
fied with only grinding their corn and 
that in the course of time they fell 
upon the invention of separating the 
meal from the pollard or bran. This 
was at first done by a sieve moved 
with the hands; and even yet in 
France, when what is called monturein 
groose is employed, there is a particu¬ 
lar place for bolting, where the sieve is 
moved with the hand by means of a 
handle. It is customary, also, in many 
parts of Dover, Saxony and Alsace to 
bolt the flour separately, for which 
purpose, various sieves are necessary. 
The Romans had two principal kinds 
cribra excussoria and pollinaria , the 
latter of which gave the finest flour 
called pollen. Sieves of horse-hair 
were first made by the Gauls and those 
of linen by the Spaniards. The method 
of applying a sieve in the form of an 


extended bag to the works of the mill y 
that the meal might fall into it as it 
came from the stones, and of causing it 
to be turned and shaken by machinery* 
was first made known in the beginning 
of the sixteenth century. We are ex¬ 
pressly told in several ancient chron¬ 
icles that at Midsummer, 1502, machin¬ 
ery for bolting in mills was first 
introduced and employed at Gwikaw. 
Nicholas Boiler, who first gave rise to 
this improvement, being then sworn 
master of the baker’s company. Coarse 
and not bolted flour, such as is still 
used in many places and as was used 
through necessity, at Gwikaw in 1641,. 
was before that period used for baking. 
It is said that about the year 1533, a 
freeman of Memmingen taught the 
people of Appenzal to make the beauti¬ 
ful white bolted flour, so much and so 
far celebrated. Various machines for 
the manufacture of bolting cloth, were 
from time to time invented, until it 
was systematized and established by 
regulating the different degrees of 
fineness by numbers ranging from 0 
to 20, the former indicating the coarser 
and the latter the very finest of Dutch 
Anchor brand. Bolting-cloth is man¬ 
ufactured at Gera, a few miles from 
Leipsic Germany, also at Potsdam and 
Berlin; at the latter place the manu¬ 
facture of it is carried on by the Jews. 

The devices for separating the meal 
after grinding so as to give the largest 
amount of “ extra ” and u superfine,” 
flour are almost innumerable. About 
twenty years ago it became almost an 
established fact that in grinding a 
given quantity of wheat 80 per cent, 
was to be counted as first grade, and 
20 per cent middling or second grade. 
Recent improvements and inventions 
have entirely changed this seemingly 
well established theory, and the 20 
per cent, as formerly set down as mid- 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


539 


dlings or second grade is now so man¬ 
ipulated as to become the highest 
grade of flour known to the trade, and 
very far superior to the portion hereto¬ 
fore regarded as “extra.” This is brought 
about by a process known to millers as 
“ high grinding” whereby a large por¬ 
tion is run off into coarse middlings. 
These middlings are then passed over 
machines where a series of blast and 
suction fans are introduced until every 
particle of impurity is removed and the 
middlings left are coarse and feel like 
sand, and are prepared for re-grinding. 
After being re-ground, the product is 
bolted through No. 12 to No. 16 cloth 
and produces a grade of flour far supe¬ 
rior to what has been heretofore known 
as the best. These machines are now 
coming into very general use, and are 
generally known as “ middlings puri¬ 
fiers.” It is a well established fact 
that their introduction has added from 
five to ten per cent, to the value of 
every bushel of wheat raised in the 
country, besides furnishing consumers 
with much better flour. 

These improvements will doubtless 
continue until the separation will be so 
complete that there will be nothing of 
a kernel of wheat except flour and 
bran, instead of flour, middlings, ship 
stuffs, bran and shorts; making two 
instead of five separations. 


AGE OF TREES AND SIZE OF TIMBER. 

W. W. Spicer contributes to “ Hard- 
wicke’s Science Gossip ” an interesting 
article on the above subject. He says: 

“The life of a plant is determined 
by its inner structure, by the laws of 
its growth, by its power of resisting 
external injuries, and by other circum¬ 
stances, many of which are a mystery, 
and no doubt will ever remain so. But, 
bounded though it is withm limits as 


narrow and precise as those which 
hedge round the life of man or the 
lower animals, there are cases on record 
of certain members of the vegetable 
kingdom whose existence has been pro¬ 
longed for very extraordinary periods. 

“ The most celebrated of all old trees 
(and perhaps the most curious, from its 
belonging to the endogenous division, 
which does not generally boast of long- 
lived members) is the Great Dragon 
tree, of Orotova, in Teneriffe. This 
monstrous specimen, which came to an 
untimely end in a hurricane a few 
months ago, was well known and care¬ 
fully looked after at the conquest of the 
island by De Bethencourt in the year 
1402. It appears to have been of the 
same size and appearance then as now 
— namely, from 70 to 80 feet high, 
with a hollow trunk of about 20 feet 
in diameter — whence, judging from 
the slowness of growth in this family 
of plants, and the little change that has 
taken place in four centuries and a half, 
it is inferred that the tree could not 
have been less than 5,000 years old at 
the time of its death. Another giant 
among the pigmies of modern days is 
the Baobab (Adansonia), an African 
tree, specimens of which, growing on 
the banks of the Senegal river, 60 to 80 
feet high, and 30 feet in diameter, were 
estimated by Adanson to be over 5,000 
years old. The Portuguese, on their 
voyages of discovery, were in the habit 
of carving their names, etc., on con¬ 
spicuous trees, as a memorial of their 
having been the first to visit the spot. 
Adanson arrived at the age of the trees 
by comparing the depth of the indent¬ 
ations with the number of 1 rings 1 in 
the portions of wood overgrowing them. 
The names themselves bore a date 
which showed them to have been cut 
three centuries prior to his visit. It 
has been suggested that possibly in a 








540 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


tropical climate these rings may not be 
so good a test of age as in our more 
temperate clime, where they are really 
annual. Nevertheless, allowing that 
the Baobab forms two rings in each 
year, in lieu of one, it is still deserving 
of 1 honorable mention. 1 Yews have a 
great reputation as long-livers. The 
care usually taken of them in church¬ 
yards and similar places, no doubt tends 
greatly to their preservation. Thus a 
yew in the church-yard of Brabourne, 
in Kent, has, it is believed, reached the 
enormous age of 3,000 years; another 
at Fortingal, in Scotland, is quoted at 
2,600 years, and others at Crowhurst, 
in Surrey, and at Fountains Abbey, are 
put down at 1,400 years. The yew has 
some near relatives in the cypress, the 
Taxodium, and the Wellingtonia. Of 
the first there is a specimen at Grenada, 
which was a celebrated tree before the 
Moors were expelled from Spain by 
Ferdinand and Isabella, toward the end 
of the fifteenth century. A Taxodium 
distichum at Oaxaca, in Mexico, which 
in 1829 measured 120 feet in hight, by 
117 in circumference, is supposed to 
number forty centuries. It sheltered 
Hernan Cortez and his little band of 
adventurers under its wide-spreading 
boughs about the year 1520. Among 
the gigantic Wellingtonias (or Wash- 
ingtonias, as our thin-skinned cousins 
across the Atlantic will persist in call¬ 
ing them, in spite of priority of title) — 
among these mammoth trees of Califor¬ 
nia, which reach a hight of 300 or 400 
feet, individuals have been observed 
which must have witnessed 3,000 sum¬ 
mers. 

“ Two other American trees, both 
Brazillian, have been noticed for their 
size and probably long lease of life. 
The first is the Bertholetia, which 
supplies the ‘ Brazil nut 1 of commerce, 
specimens of which, growing on the 


banks of the Amazon, have been no¬ 
ticed with more than 1,000 distinct 
rings. The other is the Hymenaea, in 
connection with which I transcribe 
the following passage from ‘ Lindley’s 
Vegetable Kingdom. 1 The size of the 
timber is sometimes prodigious. The 
locust trees of the west have long been 
celebrated for their gigantic stature, 
and other species are the colossi of South 
American forests. Martius represents 
a scene in Brazil, where some trees of 
this kind occurred of such enormous 
dimensions that fifteen Indians with 
outstretched arms could only just em¬ 
brace one of them. At the bottom they 
were 84 feet in circumference, and 60 
feet where the boles became cylindrical. 
By counting the concentric rings of 
such parts as were accessible, he arrived 
at the conclusion that they were of the 
age of Homer, and 332 years old in the 
days of Pythagoras; one estimate in¬ 
deed reduced their antiquity to 2,052 
years, while another carried it up to 
4,104; from which he argues that the 
trees cannot but date far beyond the 
time of our Savior. 

“ My remaining examples are Euro¬ 
pean. Among them is a chestnut tree 
growing on Mount Etna, and generally 
known as Castagna dicento cavalli, on 
account of the immense space which it 
overshadows. It is 180 feet in circum¬ 
ference, and cannot be less than one 
thousand years old. A scarcely less 
celebrated tree is growing at Tort- 
worth, in Gloucestershire. It was a 
tree 1 of mark' in the days of King 
John. The great lime tree of Neustadt 
on the Kocher, in Wurtemburg, which 
as early as 1220 caused the town to be 
known as Neustadt an der grossen 
Linde , is believed to be not less than 
800 years old. Its stem is 38 feet in 
circumference. At Worms, where 
there has been lately such a gathering 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


541 


of crowned and ducal heads to do honor 
to the memory of the great Reformer 
Luther, is an elm well known in Ger¬ 
many as the Lutherbaum, which meas¬ 
ures 116 feet in hight, with a stem 35 
feet in circumference, and has attained 
an age of not less than 700 years. 

*'A less venerable member of the 
vegetable kingdom, though still one 
that can look back through a tolerable 
vista of years, is a Judas tree (Cercis 
siliquastrum), in the Botanic Garden 
at Montpelier; It was planted in 1598, 
and consequently numbers 270 years. 
Its trunk a short time ago measured 
12 feet round. In 1 Science Gossip ’ of 
last year, p. 163, was given a short 
account of a rose, which covers one 
end of the principal church at Hilde- 
sheim, in Hanover. This remarkable 
climber was well known as 1 a monu¬ 
ment of the past’ as early as 1054. 
Tradition assigns its origin to the year 
814, under Louis the Pious, son and 
successor of Charlemagne. 

44 Another tree with a legendary his¬ 
tory is a 4 G ospel Oak 1 in my own 
neighborhood in Hampshire, standing 
in Avington Park. If we are to believe 
the stories told of it, and common there 
in every one’s mouth, this 4 old, old tree ’ 
was spared, at the earnest intercession 
of certain monks residing at Winches¬ 
ter, solely on account of its great age, 
when a brother of William the Con- 
querer leveled the whole of the sur¬ 
rounding forest of Hampage, about 
a. d. 1076. For some sixteen centuries, 
therefore, it has defied the storms of 
winter; but the latter have conquered 
at last. Ten years ago the old veteran 
made a final struggle to show some 
signs of life; and now it stands a hol¬ 
low trunk, with two or three bare and 
withered arms, and only prevented 
from falling by a stout band of iron, 
with which it is encircled. A mere 


infant by the side of the Avington tree 
is the Great Oak of Pleischwitz, near 
Breslau, whose age is reckoned by Goep- 
pert at 700 years. It was blown down 
in 1857; its fall being due to a hollow 
within its huge stem, which could 
accommodate with ease twenty-five 
or thirty persons standing upright. 

44 Dr. A. B. Reichenbach, in his 
4 Yollstaendige Naturgeschichte,’ says: 
4 We know of limes in Lithunia with 
815 annual rings, and a circumference 
of 82 feet; of oaks in the Polish forests 
in which one can count 710 perfect 
rings, and whose stems measured 49 
feet round. There are elms whose age 
is known to be above 350 years, ivy 
440, maples 516, larch 570, oranges 640, 
planes 720, cedars 800, walnut 900, 
limes 1,000, pines 1,200, oaks 1,400, 
olives 2,000.’ From these numerous ex¬ 
amples of extreme old age one may 
almost conclude that (provided the 
seed from which they spring be sound, 
the soil and climate favorable, and the 
means of nourishment abundant) the 
existence of many plants may be ex¬ 
tended to an indefinite period, should 
they be fortunate enough to escape 
accidents from without/’ 


THE NEW PILGRIM’S PROGRESS. 


1620. Lands on Plymouth Rock, 
and sets up for himself. 

1621. Keeps Thanksgiving — in no 
danger of overeating. 

1622. Builds a Meeting-house. 

1623. Proclaims a Fast Day. 

1628. Cuts down a May Pole at 
Merry Mount as a rebuke to vain 
recreations. 

1635. Is crowded for accommodations 
and stakes out a new farm at Con¬ 
necticut. 

1638. Makes war on the Antinomi- 








542 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ans and the Pequot Indians, and whips 
both. 

1638. Starts a College, and 

1640. Sets up a Printing Press. 

1643. Goes into a Confederacy—the 
first Colonial Congress. 

1648. Lays down the Cambridge 
Platform. Hangs a witch. 

1651. Is rebuked for w intolerable 
excess and bravery of apparel,” and is 
forbidden to wear gold and silver lace, 
or other such gew-gaws. 

1652. Coins Pine Tree Shillings, and 
makes the business profitable. 

1663. Prints a Bible for the Indians. 

1680. Buys a “hang-up” clock, and 
occasionally carries a silver watch 
that helps him guess the time of day. 
About this period learns to use forks 
at table; a new fashion. 

1701. Founds another College, which, 
after a while, settles down at New 
Haven. 

1704. Prints his first newspaper in 
Boston. 

1705. Tastes coffee as a luxury, and 
at his own table. 

1707. Constructs another Platform— 
this time at Saybrook. 

1710. Begins to sip tea—very spar¬ 
ingly. It does not come into family 
use till five and twenty years later. 

1711. Puts a letter into his first 
Post-office. 

1720. Eats a potato—and takes one 
home to plant in his garden as a 
curiosity. 

1721. Is inoculated for the small¬ 
pox. Begins to sing by note on 
Sundays, thereby encountering much 
opposition and opening a ten year’s 
quarrel. 

1740. Manufactures tin-ware, and 
starts the first tin peddler on his 
travels. 

1742. Sees Faneuil Hall built. The 
cradle of Liberty is ready to be rocked. 


1745. Builds an organ; but does 
not yet permit it to be played in the 
meeting-house. 

1750. Buys a bushel of potatoes for 
winter’s use—all his friends wondering 
what he will do with so many. 

1755. Puts up a Franklin stove in 
his best room; and tries one of the 
newly invented lightning rods. 

1760. About this time begins to 
wear a collar to his shirt. 

1765. Shows his dislike to stamped 
paper, and joins the u Sons of Liberty.” 

1768. Tries his hand at type found- 
ing. 

1770. Buys a home-made wooden 
clock. 

1773. Waters his tea in Boston har¬ 
bor. Plants liberty trees wherever he 
finds good soil. 

1774. Lights Boston streets with oil 
lamps; a novelty (though “new lights” 
had been plenty some years before. 

1775. Shows Lord Percy how to 
march to “Yankee Doodle.” Sends 
General Putnam with a small party, to 
select a site for Bunker Hill monument. 

1776. Brother Jonathan—as he be¬ 
gins to be called in the family—de¬ 
clares himself free and independent. 

1780. Buys an “ umbrillo” for Sun¬ 
days, and whenever he shows it, is 
laughed at for his effeminacy. 

1791. Starts a cotton spinning fac¬ 
tory. 

1792. Has been raising silk worms 
in Connecticut; and now gives his 
minister (not his wife) a home-made 
silk gown. Buys a carpet for the 
middle of the parlor floor. 

1793. Invents the cotton gin—and 
thereby trebles the value of Southern 
plantations. 

1795-1800. Wears pantaloons oc¬ 
casionally, but not when in full dress. 
Begins to use plates on the breakfast 
and tea table. 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


543 


1802. Has the boys and girls vacci¬ 
nated. 

1806. Tries to burn a piece of hard 
coal from Philadelphia; a failure. 

1807. Sees a boat go by steam on the 
Hudson. 

1815. Holds a little convention at 
Hartford, but doesn’t propose to dis¬ 
solve the Union. Buys one of Terry’s 
patent “shelf clocks” for $36, and 
regulates his watch by it. 

1816. Sets up a stove in the meeting¬ 
house, and builds a lire in it on Sun¬ 
day; an innovation which is stoutly 
resisted by many. 

1817. Begins to run a steamboat on 
Long Island Sound—and takes pass¬ 
age on it to New York, after making 
his will. 

1819. Grown bolder, he crosses the 
Atlantic in a steamship. 

1822. Lights gas in Boston (but 
doesn’t light Boston with gas till 1829.) 
At last learns how to make hard coal 
burn, and sets a grate in his parlor. 
Buys a steel pen (one of Gillott’s, sold 
at $33 per gross.) Has his every day 
shirts made without ruffles. 

1825. About this time puts a per¬ 
cussion lock on his old musket. 

1826. Buys his wife a pair of queer¬ 
shaped India-rubber overshoes. Puts 
on his first false collar. Tries an “ex¬ 
perimental ” railroad, by horse-power. 

1828. Tastes his first tomato— 
doubtingly. Is told that it is unfash¬ 
ionable to feed himself with his knife— 
and buys silver forks for great occa¬ 
sions. 

1833. Buys his first friction match, 

then called a “ lucifer,” and afterwards 

“ loco-foco.” Throws awav the old 

¥ 

tinder-box with his flint and steel. 

1835. Invents the revolver, and sets 
about supplying the world with it, as 
a peace-maker. Tries a gold pen, but 
cannot find a good one yet—nor till 


1844. Builds a real railroad and rides 
on it. 

1837. Gets in a panic — and out 
again, after free use of “ shin-plasters.” 

1838. Adopts the new fashion of 
putting his letters in envelopes (a 
fashion which does not fairly prevail 
till seven years later.) 

1840. Sits for his daguerreotype, and 
gets a picture fearfully and wonder¬ 
fully made. Begins to blow himself 
up with “Camphene” and “Burning 
Fluid;” and continues the process for 
years, with changes of name of the 
active agent down to and including 
“Non-Explosive Kerosene.” 

1844. Sends his first message by the 
electric telegraph. 

1847. Buys his wife a sewing ma¬ 
chine—in the vain hope that somehow 
it will keep the buttons on his shirts. 
Begins to receive advices from the 
“ Spirit World.” 

1855. Begins to bore and be bored 
by the Hoosac Tunnel. 

1858. Celebrates the laying of the 
ocean cable, and sends a friendly mes¬ 
sage to John Bull. Next week begins 
to doubt whether the cable has been 
laid at all. 

1861. Goes South to help compose a 
family quarrel. Takes to using paper 
money. 

1861-5. Climbs the hill Difficulty— 
relieved of his pack after Jan. 1, 1864; 
but looses Great Heart, April 14, 1865. 

1865. Gets the Atlantic cable in 
working order. 

1865-75. Is reconstructing and talk¬ 
ing about resumption. 

1875. Goes to Bunker Hill to cele¬ 
brate. Completes the Hoosac Tunnel. 

1876. Celebrates his centennial an¬ 
niversary at Philadelphia, and jingles 
silver in his pockets.— J. Hammond 
Trumball , of the Hartford Courant 
Almanac. 













544 


THE PEOPLE’S LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


OYSTERS. 


Among the food treasures of the sea 
the oyster ranks high in the general 
esteem, and deservedly so, for she is 
truly the queen of bivalves. The young 
“fry” come forth alive; so small that 
whole troops of them may sport at ease 
in one single drop of water. It is esti¬ 
mated that a single parent gives birth 
to two million embryo during the 
spawning season—May to August. 
After birth they swim about for a 
short season, using for the purpose a 
peculiar pad-like paddle which they 
use with great skill, and which is ab¬ 
sorbed for their own sustenance as soon 
as they have found and attached them¬ 
selves to their future home. This is usu¬ 
ally a stake, reed, stone, shell, or simi¬ 
lar solid substance. For this purpose 
oystermen place bunches of sticks sus¬ 
pended in the water from wires sup¬ 
ported by stakes, numerously over the 
spawning places. If the young do not 
find an anchorage soon, the tide carries 
them to sea, from which they are never 
able to return, so that out of a million 
only a few hundred may survive. When 
the young have thus fastened them¬ 
selves to their anchorage they are called 
“ spat.” 

At six months old they are an inch 
or over in length, and ready to remove, 
and for this purpose numerous sloops 
and schooners go to Southern waters 
from the vicinity of New York city and 
Baltimore to bring the young, now 
known as “seed,” to Northern waters 
to mature. The seed is sold by the 
bushel of about 2,500 oysters at 60 cts. 
When the vessels return the planting 
takes place. This is simply scattering 
the seed over the beds, which are located 
in the edge of salt water where fresh 
flows in, and the bottom is covered 


with two or three inches of organic 
mud or hardpan bottom. Here they 
are allowed to remain one or two, 
rarely three years. They are then 
taken up by means of tongs or dredges 
—and taken a little way up a fresh 
water stream to shallow water, and 
thrown in “to get a drink.” This 
sweetens and cleanses them; here they 
remain only a short time—a single 
day or tide will suffice. They are then 
taken up with forks. After being 
removed from the stream preparatory 
to sending them to market they are 
culled. The smallest size are called 
“culls.” The. other size are called 
‘‘ counts,” and are sold by the hundred. 
From this class we get those nice 
“ fries ” and luscious “ raws” which we 
so relish. 

The yearly returns from the trade is 
about $6,000,000. It gives employment 
to about 12,000 men; 800 sailing ves¬ 
sels of all sizes are employed in the 
trade. 


CHAMPAGNE. 

The champagne from which the 
wine takes its name, was an ancient 
province of France; but of this only 
the prefectures of Epernay and Rheims 
produce good wine. The grape gener¬ 
ally grown for producing champagne 
is the black burgundy, it being the 
singular fact that this wine which is 
perhaps the whitest of all wines is 
made from a black grape. Only about 
one-fourth of the grapes grown in the 
Champagne district are converted into 
effervescing wine. The rest are made 
mostly into red wine by a process sim¬ 
ilar to that employed in Burgundy. 
The grapes are picked early in the 
morning and are carried in baskets to 
the roadside where they are carefully 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


545 


sorted, all unripe and unsound berries 
being cut out by scissors. They are 
then packed in panniers which are 
placed on donkeys to be carried home. 
Here they are emptied directly into 
presses closely resembling the cider 
presses used in this country. The wine 
running from the press when the 
power is first applied is considered best. 
After it has stopped flowing the fol¬ 
lower is raised, the edges of cake are 
cut off and thrown into the middle and 
pressure again applied. This is re¬ 
peated several times; but the whole 
process must be completed before the 
grapes commence to ferment, because 
the slightest fermentation during the 
pressing will extract the color from 
the husks. The must runs into large 
vats, where it stands from six to 
twenty hours during which time it 
throws up a froth and deposits other 
impurities in the bottom of the casks. 
The must is carefullv drawn off from 
these into barrels, in which it under¬ 
goes the first fermentation. It remains 
in these barrels until about the first of 
December; it is then clear and is 
drawn off from the lees. It is now 
ready for sale to the manufacturers. 
The first step in the manufacture is to 
mix the products of various vineyards 
so as to produce a wine which shall 
resemble some particular brand, such as 
Sillery, Epernay or any other that may 
be popular at the time. The wine is 
then fined by means of isinglass, it 
takes from -J to \ of an ounce of this to 
each barrel. This occupies about a 
month. If at the end of this time it 
is not clear, it is drawn off from the 
lees and fined again. The wine during 
this process of fining is also treated 
with sulphur vapor, in order to make it 
as pale as possible. It is then drawn 
off, bottled and corked. As soon as 
the bottles have been corked, they are 


carried into the cellars and put into 
immense piles, some houses filling 
every year several thousand bottles. 
As the temperature in the cellar in¬ 
creases with the approach of summer, 
the wine begins to ferment. This is 
the critical time with the manufacture. 
Many bottles burst from the pressure 
of the disengaged gases; but if the 
breakage does not exceed 8 per cent, by 
the end of August, no particular meas¬ 
ures are taken; if however, it much 
exceeds this amount, the bottles must 
be uncorked and recorked. This is a 
dangerous operation, since oftentimes 
the bottles explode while in the hands 
of the workmen. The constant break¬ 
ing of bottles sounds like a succession 
of pistol shots; this however, ceases 
entirely by the end of summer. When 
the fermentation is finished, the stacks 
of bottles are overhauled, all broken 
bottles removed, and those in good 
order are restacked. These are then 
allowed to remain at rest until the 
yeast has settled at the lower side of 
the bottle, and in this state the wine 
remains until it is ready for sale. It 
has yet to be cleared. For this pur¬ 
pose the bottles are placed neck down¬ 
wards on long benches, pierced with 
holes, into which the neck fits. The 
deposit gradually settles upon the cork. 
This is then removed by skillfully re¬ 
moving the cork and allowing the 
froth which escapes to carry the yeast 
with it. The wine is now ready for 
finishing. As above prepared, it is 
dry and somewhat deficient in flavor. 
To impart sweetness of flavor, a cer¬ 
tain quantity of liqueur must be added. 
This is prepared from sugar, and some 
very fine flavored old wine for the 
better qualities of champagne; but 
from brandy, wine and sugar, for the 
more common kinds, every manufac¬ 
turer however, has his particular re- 





546 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFOUiux*.i javxx. 


cipes; and the liqueur also varies with 
the country to which the wine is to be 
sent. Thus England requires wine 
stronger in alcohol, and not too 
sweet; while in Russia, a very sweet 
wine is preferred. After the liqueur 
has been added, the bottles are again 
corked, the corks tied down, the bottles 
washed and dried, labels attached and 
the corks covered with tin-foil. The 
bottles are then wrapped in paper, 
packed in boxes and baskets, and are 
ready for market. There are four 
varieties of champagne; first, the non- 
effervescent, which was the original 
wine of the champagne, and may be 
either red or white; second, the creamy 
or slightly effervescent; third, the 
effervescent, which will expel the cork 
with a moderate report, and gently 
rises over the mouth of the bottle; 
fourth, the strongly effervescent which 
expels the cork with a loud, report and 
immediately overflows the bottle and a 
small quantity of which, when poured 
out will also fill the glass with a foam. 
These varieties are known respectively 
as nonmousseux, cremant , mousseux, 
and grand mousseux. It is as useless 
to expect to get good champagne at 
half price, as it is to buy gold or silver 
for half its value. The lowest price in 
Champagne is about $4. per dozen, and 
a good quality can be bought there for 
about double this figure. The lowest 
quality would cost at least $10, per 
dozen in this country, and there is no 
limit to the price for the best qualities. 


HISTORY OF SOAP. 

The first express mention of soap 
occurs in Pliny and Gaul, and the 
former declares it to be an invention of 
the Gauls, though he prefers the Ger¬ 
man to the Gallic soap. Pliny says 
that soap was made of tallow and 


ashes; that the best was made of goat’s 
tallow and the ashes of the beech tree 
and that there were two kinds of it, 
hard and soft. The author of a work 
on simple medicines which is ascribed 
to Galen; but which however, does 
not seem to have been written by that 
author, and of which only a Latin 
translation has been printed, speaks of 
soap being made by a mixture of oxen, 
goat’s or sheep’s tallow, and a lye of 
ashes strengthened with quicklime. He 
says that the German soap was the 
purest, the fattest and the best; and 
that the next in quality was the Gallic. 
This account corresponds more exactly 
with the process used in Germany at 
present; whereas the French use min¬ 
eral alkali and instead of tallow employ 
oil, which appears to be a later inven¬ 
tion. Pliny, in his description, does 
not speak of quicklime; but as he men¬ 
tions a mixture of goat’s tallow and 
quicklime a little before, it is probable 
that the use of the latter was then 
known at Rome. Gallic and German 
soap are often mentioned by later 
writers, as well as by the Arabians; 
sometimes, on account of their exter¬ 
nal use as a medicine, and sometimes, 
on account of their use in washing 
clothes. The latter purpose is that for 
which soap is principally employed in 
modern times; but it does not seem to 
have been the cause of German soap 
being introduced at Rome. The Ger¬ 
man soap with which, as Pliny tells us, 
the Germans colored their hair red, 
was imported to Rome for the use of 
the fashionable Roman ladies and their 
gallants. In the remotest periods it 
appears that clothes were cleaned by 
being rubbed or stamped upon in water 
without the addition of any substance 
whatever. Homer says that Nausicaa 
and her attendants washed their clothes 
by treading upon them with their feet 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


547 


in pits, into which they had collected 
water. It is thought the Egyptian 
alkali was the strongly burnt ashes of 
those plants which are still used in 
Egypt for making salt, and perhaps the 
same with which the Spaniards were 
made aquainted by the Arabians, and 
which they cultivate for making soda. 
Strabo speaks of an alkaline water in 
Armenia which was used by the scour¬ 
ers for washing clothes. The ancients 
made ointments of this mineral alkali 
and oil; but not hard soap, though by 
these means they approached nearer to 
the invention than the old Germans in 
their use of wood ashes. In Rome, on 
account of the disagreeable smell at¬ 
tending their employment, the scour¬ 
ers were obliged to reside either in the 
suburbs, or in some of the unfrequented 
streets. The principal kinds of soap 
manufactured in this country are 
white soap, composed chiefly of tallow 
and soda, and of olive oil and soda; 
yellow soap, made of tallow, rosin and 
soda, and a little palm oil. Soft soap 
is made with pot ash and drying oils, 
either alone or mixed with tallow and 
other coarse fatty matters. 


WASHINGTON’S ANCESTRY. 

Garsdon, a small town or parish in 
Wilts county, England, has the honor 
of containing in its venerable church a 
monument to the memory of General 
George Washington’s ancestors—a 
memorial which in the heart of every 
patriotic American, is replete with as¬ 
sociations the most tender and sacred. 

The village of Garsdon is about two 
miles from Malmsbury, and the church 
is a quaint Gothic edifice, situated in 
the bosom of a rich country, and sur¬ 
rounded with ancient trees. For gen¬ 
erations past the country people of 
this charming spot have been in the 


habit of conducting strangers to the 
church, for the purpose of pointing out 
this venerable memorial of the archi¬ 
tect of the American republic, the 
Father of his country. 

The monument was once a superb 
specimen of the mural style, and even 
now presents evidences of rich and 
curious workmanship. It is to be seen 
in the chancel on the left side of the 
altar, and is finely carved out of the 
stone of that part of the country. It 
is surmounted with the family coat-of- 
arms, which forms a handsome embla¬ 
zonment of heraldry; and although 
erected more than two hundred years 
ago; they are still burnished with 
gilding, and the following interesting 
inscription appears: 

“To ye memory of SIR LAWRENCE 
WASHINGTON, NITE, Lately Chief Regis¬ 
ter of ye Cliancerye, of Renown, Piety and 
Charity, an Exemplarye and loving Husband, 
a tender Father, a Bountefulle Master, a Con¬ 
stant Reliever of ye Poore, and to Thoas of 
of his Parish a Perpetual Benefactor Whom 
it Pleased God to Take into Is Peace. From 
ye Furye of ye Iuzuing Warrs. Born May 
YIY. He was Heare Interred May XXIY., 
An. Dni., 643, M. at. Sue 64. Heare Also 
Lyeth Dame Anne, Is Wife, who Deceased 
January XHIth: and Who Was Beryed 
XVIth, Anno Dni. 1645.” 

The ancient English homestead of 
the Washington family is handsome, 
very old fashioned, and built of stone, 
with immense solidity and strength. 
The timber about it is chiefly oak, and 
in several of the rooms, particularly 
the old hall or banqueting room, there 
are rich remains of gilding, carved 
work in cornices, ceiling and panels, 
polished floors and wainscoting, also 
shields containing the same coat-of- 
arrns as on the mural monument in 
the church carved over the lofty and 
antique mantel-pieces. 

Beneath the house are extensive cel¬ 
lars, which, with the banqueting room, 
seem to indicate the genuine hospitality 
and princely style of living, peculiar to 









548 


THE PEOPLES* LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


a “fine old English gentleman, all of 
the olden time.** And, indeed, accord¬ 
ing to the traditions and chronicles of 
that region of the country, such was 
the general character of the heads of 
the Washington family. The walls of 
the house are five feet thick, and the 
entire residence is surrounded by beau¬ 
tiful gardens and orchards. In the old 
paish archives the Washington family 
are, in frequent instances, most warmly 
referred to as among the benefactors of 
the parish ; and from the very earliest 
recorded times they seem to have been 
the lords of the soil at Garsdon down 
to the period of their leaving. 


DANIEL WEBSTER’S LAST SPEECH. 

There are very many speeches by 
many orators that could very well be 
spared. Silence would be golden, in¬ 
deed, compared with such speech. But 
we cannot afford to lose the following, 
which is the last speech of Daniel 
Webster at Washington. It is as pa¬ 
thetic as it is beautiful. It was delivered 
from the front door of his residence, 
next the Unitarian Church, to a noisy 
crowd, who had assembled to rejoice 
over the nomination of Gen. Scott as 
the Whig candidate at Baltimore. Mr. 
Webster, who had expected that he 
would have received the nomination 
himself, betrayed no trace of disap¬ 
pointment, but spoke in his deep, 
melodious voice, “whose every tone 
was music*s own,** saying: 

“I thank you, fellow-citizens, for this 
friendly and respectful call. I am very glad 
to see you. Some of you have been engaged 
in an arduous public duty at Baltimore, the 
object of your meeting being the selection of 
a person to be supported for the office of 
President of the United States. Others of 
you take an interest in the result of the de¬ 
liberations of that assembly of Whigs. It so 
happened that my name, among others, was 
presented on the occasion; another candidate, 


however, was preferred. I have only to say, 
gentlemen, that the convention did, I doubt 
not, what it thought best, and exercised its 
discretion in the important matter committed 
to it. The result has caused me no personal 
feeling whatever, nor any change of conduct 
or purpose. What I have been I am, in 
principle and character; and what I am I hope 
to continue to be. Circumstances or oppo¬ 
nents may triumph over my fortunes, but they 
will not triumph over my temper or self- 
respect. 

“Gentlemen, this is a serene and beautiful 
night. Ten thousand thousand of the lights 
of Heaven illuminate the firmament. They 
rule the night. A few hours hence their glory 
will be extinguished. 

Ye stars that glitter in the skies, 

And gayly dance before our eyes, 

What are ye when the sun shall rise? 

“Gentlemen, there is not one among you 
who will sleep better to-night than I shall. If 
I wake I shall learn the hour from the con¬ 
stellations, and I shall rise in the morning, 
God willing, with the lark; and, though the 
lark is a better songster than I am, yet he will 
not leave the dew and the daisies and spring 
upward to greet the purpling East with a 
more blithe and jocund spirit than I shall 
possess. Gentlemen, I again repeat my thanks 
for this mark of your respect, and commend 
you to the enjoyment of a quiet and satis¬ 
factory repose. May God bless you all.” 


GOLD DISCOVERIES OF AMERICA. 

Of all the precious metals, gold ap¬ 
pears to have been the earliest known, 
as well as the most beautiful of all 
metallic substances. The existence of 
gold in California was discovered by 
the expedition under Sir Francis Drake, 
which sailed from England in 1577, 
and between that date and 1580 ex¬ 
plored the Pacific coast of the Western 
continent, plundered Spanish settle¬ 
ments, and took possession of Cali¬ 
fornia in the name of Queen Elizabeth 
of England, and circumnavigated the 
globe. The gold placers of California 
were mentioned by Loyola Cavello, in 
an account published in Spain in 1690. 
The western North American gold field 
extends comprehensively over the whole 
mountain region "west of the Mississippi 
river and north of the Isthmus of Te- 











THE PEOPLES' LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


549 


huantepec and Yucatan, to the extreme 
northern line of Alaska, all along the 
shore of the Pacific ocean, and far 
eastward toward the interior. Mexico, 
as early as 1517, was known to the 
world as a country rich in gold and 
other precious metals. The Spaniards 
conceived the Californias to be im¬ 
mensely rich in gold. The first settle¬ 
ment in lower California was by the 
Jesuit missionaries in 1683. The first 
settlement in upper California was by 
the Franciscan Fathers, at San Diego, 
in the year 1767. On October 25, 
1769, a party from San Diego discovered 
and named the Bay of San Francisco, 
being probably the first white men ever 
there. The mineralogy of California 
is to be noted for its simplicity. Of 
the 700 or more known mineral species, 
but about 100 are there to be found. 
The minerals and metals mined for in 
California with success, are mostly 
gold, mercury, copper and silver. 
Previous to the California excitement, 
gold had been discovered and the mines 
worked in North Carolina, Virginia, 
Georgia, and some in Vermont. In 
1848 California was a vast territory, 
sparsely settled by a few Mexicans, less 
Americans, and some Indians. At this 
time, forty-one years ago, the discovery 
was made which peopled the Pacific 
coast, California then a Mexican colony 
subsequently became annexed to the 
United States by a treaty of peace 
ratified on the thirtieth of May, 1848. 
The credit of the discovery of gold in 
California has been universally con¬ 
ceded to James W. Marshall, who was 
born in Hope township, Huntingdon 
county. New Jersey. He started over¬ 
land to California in company with 
others about 1844. Some time in the 
year 1847 Marshall was sent by Sutter 
up the American river in search of a 
site for a saw-mill. He found a suitable 


location at a point on the American 
fork of the Sacramento river, now 
known as Coloma, marked a site for a 
mill, and returned to Sutter's Fort and 
formed a copartnership with Sutter 
who agreed to assist him in building 
the mill. The contract was made 
August 19, 1847- During the winter 
the race-way of the mill became dam¬ 
aged. On February 9, 1848, three 
Americans, of whom two were Mor¬ 
mons, were at work repairing the race¬ 
way; Marshall was the overseer, and he 
had his little daughter with him, who 
amused herself with the pebbles she 
found among the freshly dug gravel. 
This little girl found a lump or nugget 
of gold in the race-way, and this she 
presented to her father as a pretty 
stone. As there were some doubts as to 
it being gold, Marshall sent the speci¬ 
men to Mrs. Peter L. Wimmer, who 
lived at the new mill, and as she had 
formerly lived at the gold mines in 
Georgia, he sent it for her opinion. 
She was boiling soap, and put the metal 
into the kettle to see if it would cor¬ 
rode, and thus proved it to be gold. 
Other parties residing in different parts 
of California heard of the discoveries 
at Marshall's mill, came there and ob¬ 
served the indications, and returned to 
prospect in their own neighborhoods 
with success. The importance of the 
discovery of gold may be realized when 
we consider that within a little more 
than a year, or at the close of 1849, the 
estimate of United States Commissioner 
King that 55,000 miners were at work 
in the gold fields, and that $40,000,000 
in dust had been taken, and that the 
probable yield of the succeeding year, 
1850, would be $50,000,000. In 1852 
mining was begun in Oregon; soon 
after gold was discovered in Washing¬ 
ton Territory. Rich placer deposits 
were found in Idaho and Montana in 




550 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


1860. Comstock Lode was discovered 
by Allen and ILosea Grosch in 1857. 
General Custer’s expedition found gold 
in the Black Hills in 1874, and also 
about that time there was a rush to 
Leadville, Colorado. The development 
and extent of our mining industries, 
which have given us countless millions, 
and their future, with the constantly 
improved facilities for developing the 
same, can hardly be realized. Yet 
wonders are in store for us. 


POWERFUL ORDERS. 


In the United States there are over 
200 fraternal, benevolent, social, in¬ 
surance, political, religious, temper¬ 
ance and other secret orders. Follow¬ 
ing is the official membership of some 
of the more prominent American 
organizations : Freemasons, 600,000 ; 
Odd Fellows, 635,287; Grand Army 
of the Republic, 380,000; Knights of 
Pythias, 210,000; Good Templars, 
200,962; Ancient Order of United 
Workmen, 191,876; Knights of Honor, 
124,756 ; the Royal Arcanum, 80,000 ; 
Improved Order of Red Men, 64,000; 
American Legion of Honor, 61,664; 
Knights and Ladies of Honor, 49,200; 
Sons of Veterans, 47,000 ; Ancient Or¬ 
der of Foresters, 38,539 ; Daughters of 
Rebekah, 78,565 ; Knights of the 
Golden Eagle, 30,000, and Order of 
Chosen Friends, 29,271. The total 
number of Druids in the world is 
65,000. 

The total number of Odd Fellows in 
the world is estimated, January 1,1889, 
to be 1,458,440. Masonry has 15,838 
lodges and 1,082,992 members. The 
Ancient Order of Foresters has 5,128 
courts, 703,556 adult and 37,337 
juvenile members—a grand total of 
774,868. 


SIR JOHN HERSCHEL. 


Sir John Frederick William Herschel, 
Bart., the only son of Sir William 
Herschel, the celebrated astronomer of 
the reign of George III., and inheritor 
of his fame, of Hanoverian descent, was 
born at Slough, near Windsor, in Eng¬ 
land, March 7th, 1792. Educated at 
Cambridge, at St. John’s College, he 
took his degree of B. A. in 1813 with 
high honors. It was not until after his 
father’s death (1822), that he devoted 
himself in an express manner to the 
continuation of the immense work of 
astronomical research, which his father 
had carried on through life with such 
magnificent results. About the year 
1825, he commenced a series of obser¬ 
vations after his father’s methods, and 
with his father’s instruments. In this 
labor he co-operated for a time with Sir 
John South. The execution of this 
undertaking occupied full eight years. 
For the important results obtained, the 
Royal Astronomical Society, in 1826, 
voted to him and Sir John South a gold 
medal each. In addition to the labors 
of the survey, he has given the world 
proofs of his industry and versatility 
which even alone would have made him 
famous. In 1836 there appeared in 
the “Encyclopaedia Metropolitana” a 
u Treatise of Astronomy” by Herschel, 
proving his power as a popular expos¬ 
itor on the peculiar science of his 
family. 

Before the publication of this 
work, he had commenced a second great 
design in astronomy, in continuation 
and completion of that which he had 
concluded in 1833. The southern heav¬ 
ens remained to be surveyed. Herschel 
resolved to add this comparatively un¬ 
known hemisphere to the domain of 
astronomy. In execution of this great 
design he arrived at the Cape of Good 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


551 


Hope on the 15th January, 1834. His 
observations were continued for over 
four years, at his own expense. In 
1847 he published the result of his la¬ 
bors in a large quarto volume. On his 
return to England in 1838, he was re¬ 
ceived with every public honor. The 
Royal Astronomical Society had voted 
him another medal during his absence. 
He was made a D. C. L. of Oxford. In 
1848, was President of the Royal As¬ 
tronomical Society. In December, 
1850, the office of Master of the Mint 
was conferred upon him, which posi¬ 
tion was resigned by him five years af¬ 
ter, in consequence of ill health. His 
death occurred on the 11th of May, 
1871, at his seat of Collingwood, near 
Hawkshurst, Kent. 


TRUNKS. 

The word trunk is derived from the 
Latin “ Truncus,” a chest or coffer cov¬ 
ered with leather. The first mention 
of trunks occurs in Homer’s Odyssey, 
Book viii., where Odyssey receives a 
trunk filled with costly presents from 
King Alkinons. Originally trunks 
were closed with leather straps, ropes, or 
screws. The trunk above-mentioned 
was fastened by a rope knotted in a very 
skillful manner, in a fashion similar to 
the famous Gordian knot mentioned by 
Plutarch in his life of Alexander the 
Great. Locks were not used on trunks 
before the middle ages. The Greek, 
Eustathius, considers the invention of 
locks and keys to be due to the Spart¬ 
ans. Shakspeare, who is very exact in 
matters of antiquity relating to cus¬ 
toms, habits, &c., describes the trunk 
that was conveyed into the chamber of 
Imogen, containing the Roman knight 
Jachimo, says: “I have enough, to the 
trunk again and shut the spring of it. 
The nationality of a traveler now days 


can often be determined by the trunk. 
Swede and German have large wooden 
trunks, smaller at the bottom than at 
the top. The English affect tin trunks 
( u boxes” are what they call them), or 
else canvas and paper or sole leather 
trunks of peculiar pattern. The mod¬ 
erns produced a more useful, the an¬ 
cients a more ornamental trunk. 
Trunks of wood or iron of intricate 
workmanship are now in existence, 
which show much skilled labor that 
would be hard to be reproduced. 

NUMBER OF EGGS PER ANNUM. 

After repeated experiments with the 
different varieties of chickens, and com¬ 
parisons with others who have experi¬ 
mented in the same direction, it is con¬ 
cluded that the laying capacities of the 
principal varieties average about as fol¬ 
lows: 

Light Brahmas and Partridge Coch¬ 
ins—8 eggs to the pound; lay 130 per 
annum. 

Dark Brahmas—Eggs, 8 to the 
pound; lay 120 per annum. 

Black, White and Buff Cochins— 
Eggs, 8 to the pound, lay 115 per an¬ 
num. 

Plymouth Rocks—Eggs, 8 to the 
pound; lay 150 per annum. 

Houdans—Eggs, 8 to the pound; lay 
150 per annum. 

La Fleche—Eggs, 7 to the pound; lay 
130 per annum. 

Creve Cceurs—Eggs, 8 to the pound; 
lay 140 per annum. 

Black Spanish—Eggs, 7 to the pound; 
lay 140 per annum. 

Leghorns—Eggs, 8 to the pound; lay 
160 per annum. 

Hamburgs—Eggs, 9 to the pound; 
lay 160 per annum. 

Polish—Eggs, 9 to the pound; lay 
125 per annum. 

Dominiques—Eggs, 9 to the pound; 
lay 135 per annum. 

Bantams—Eggs, 16 to the pound; 
lay 90 per annum. 

Games—Eggs, 9 to the pound; lay 
130 per annum. 










552 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


TELEPHONE. 


There probably has never been an 
useful invention or discovery but which 
has been foreshadowed in previous 
ages, thus verifying the words ot Solo¬ 
mon, “there is nothing new under the 
sun.” This is as true of the telephone 
as it is of the telegraph, the steam en¬ 
gine, printing and other great inven¬ 
tions. Over 200 years ago Robert 
Hooke, Fellow of the Royal Society, 
London, Eng., published a work en¬ 
titled Mieographia in which he not 
only predicts the advent of the tele¬ 
phone but describes “other ways there 
may be of quickening our hearing or 
conveying sound through other bodies 
then [than] the Air: for that is not the 
only medium. I can assure the reader, 
that I have, by help of a distended 
wire, propagated the sound to a vei^ 
considerable distance in an instant, 01 
with as seemingly quick motion as that 
of light at least, incomparably swifter 
then [than] that, which, at the same 
time, was propagated through Air; and 
this not only in a straight line, or di¬ 
rect, but in one bended in many angles. 

How clearly this describes the acou¬ 
stic telegraph of to-day with which 
every school boy is so familiar! The 
electro-magnetic telephone of Bell, 
Gray, Edison and other inventors is 
only another form or application of 
the principle of sound waves, with the 
electric current as a conveyor or sub¬ 
stitute for the sound wave for long di¬ 
stances. The telephone is a beautiful 
illustration of the carrelation and trans¬ 
mutation of forces. First the sound 
wave impinges upon the diaphragm of 
the transmitting instrument. This is 
a mechanical motion. The vibration 
of the diaphragm disturbs the mag¬ 
netic condition of the polarized core of 
the magnet. This creates a magnetic 


force or mode of motion which in turn 
produces by induction an electric cur¬ 
rent or wave in the insulated wire sur¬ 
rounding the core of the magnet the 
circuit of which extends over an insul¬ 
ated metallic conductor any desired 
distance. Each terminal of the line, 
after passing through the instruments 
connects with the ground or a return 
wire and thus completes the circuit. 
The change of force from one form to 
another as described in the transmitt¬ 
ing instrument is now reversed at the 
receiving station. The electric current 
enters the coil of the magnet and 
disturbs the magnetic condition cor¬ 
responding with the electric waves, the 
magnet attracts and repels the dia¬ 
phragm and the latter by its vibration 
generates sound waves in the air exact¬ 
ly corresponding with the original 
sound waves at the other end of the 
line, and these, impinging upon the 
tympanum of the ear of the listener 
reproduce, but in considerably reduced 
volume, the words and very intonation 
of voice of the person speaking at a di¬ 
stance of, perhaps, hundreds of miles. 
In this form of the telephone the elec¬ 
tricity is but the body servant of the 
original sound wave and performs its 
duties with wonderful fidelity. 

The fundamental principles of the 
telephone have been known for many 
ages. It was left to the present age to 
combine these principles and reduce 
them to practical use. Pythagoras 
knew that the pitch of tone depended 
upon the rapidity of vibration. The 
Canon Gattoin de Cama observed in 
1785 that an iron wire of ten yards in 
length when stretched in the open air 
gave forth a sound under the influence 
of variation in the atmosphere due to 
the transmission of electricity. Pro¬ 
fessor Page in America, De La Rive in 
France Gassiot in London and Marian 












THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


553 


in Birmingham discovered that rods of 
iron placed in the interior of a helix, 
through which a current of electricity 
is passed give full sounds when the 
current is made or broken. 

The problem to be solved was to 
convert the air waves into electric 
waves for the purpose of transmission. 
In the toy telephone the vibrations of 
the membrane of the apparatus used 
by the speaker are communicated to 
the taut string and by it to the mem¬ 
brane of the receiving telephone. The 
distance that sound can be conveyed 
by this means rarely exceeds a mile and 
then not always with equal facility on 
account of the disturbance of the wind, 
rain storms etc. But if for the string 
a metal conductor is substituted, and 
the vibrating diaphragm is made to 
open and close an electric circuit the 
distance at which the sound waves may 
be produced is greatly increased and is 
limited only by the practical limit of 
the electric circuit. Instead of the 
electric circuit, opened and closed by 
the vibrating diaphragm the same effect 
is produced by causing the diaphragm 
to vibrate in close proximity to a fixed 
mao-net around which is coiled insulat- 
ed wire forming part of the telephonic 
circuit as already described. There are 
numerous devices for producing these 
results and various inventors are almost 
constantly making new improvements 
in this wonderful instrument so that 
but a few years will elapse until the 
business and social interests of the 
world will all pay court to this remark¬ 
able series of inventions and every house 
will be m telephonic connection with 
the rest of the world. For this purpose 
there have sprung into existence a sy¬ 
stem of telephonic exchanges by means 
of which business houses, factories, of¬ 
fices, private residences and public 
buildings are all connected by wires 


with a “Central Exchange”, where one 
or more attendants are on duty day and 
night. A. wishing to communicate 
with B. signals the central station to 
that effect. The attendant connects, 
by means of a switch board, the wires 
of A. and B. and leaves them connected 
until their use is no longer desired and, 
upon a given signal, the two wires are 
restored to their former separate cir¬ 
cuits. Thus citizens in any part of the 
city can communicate with citizens in 
any other part of the city and eventu¬ 
ally, the system will be extended so as 
to connect the Central Exchanges of 
different cities with each other. 

Among the prominent inventors of 
the telephone are A. Graham Bell, 
Thos. A. Edison and Elisha Gray in 
the United States and who justly claim 
priority over the inventors of other 
countries. 

Prof. Hughes, Edison, Bell, Clarence 
J. Blake and others have contributed 
largely to many important improve¬ 
ments of the telephonic system, one of 
the most important of which is the 
Microphone or transmitter, with which 
telephonic lines are now equipped. It 
is based upon the principle that a 
multitude of fine metallic particles, as 
a powder, placed in the circuit greatly 
increases the power of the current to 
produce vibrations upon the receiving 
diaphragm. The volume of sound is 
augmented so that a whisper miles 
away can be distinctly heard at the 
other end of the wire. Indeed, so deli¬ 
cate is this instrument that Prof. 
Hughes was able to hear the foot falls 
of a fly as it walked over the plate of 
the instrument, and sounds heretofore 
totally inaudible to the human ear can 
now be detected by this simple yet 
wonderful instrument. 

There is almost no doubt the per¬ 
fected microphone will convey to us 






554 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


that hidden ripple of the sap rising in 
growing trees and plants which Hum¬ 
boldt said might he a continuous mel¬ 
ody in the auditory organs of earth’s 
smallest creatures. 


ORCHARDS. 

As there are many persons who are 
desirous of locating and planting an 
orchard, and being in some doubt as 
to the best method, while it is not pos¬ 
sible to give specific rules adapted for 
the different soils, and climatic condi¬ 
tions, of each part of the country, a 
few general rules laid down will meet 
the wants of each individual, if proper¬ 
ly observed. The principle points have 
been condenced from the last Reports 
of the Iowa and Illinois Horticultural 
Societies, the members of which as a 
class are intelligent, and meeting annu¬ 
ally and discussing the method and re¬ 
sults of their labors from year to year, 
are enabled to arrive at instructive and 
satisfactory conclusions, for their guid¬ 
ance another season. 

Location is one of the important 
things to be considered. Sloping ground 
to the northwest or north east, is con¬ 
sidered by the majority of fruitgrowers 
better than any other exposure, for the 
reason that the sap would not flow so 
earty in the spring thereby endanger¬ 
ing the prospects of the fruit by freez¬ 
ing of the sap. Orchards in low land 
are more liable to be injured by spring 
frosts. In locating also much depends 
upon proper drainage. There appears . 
to be a diversity of opinion about the 
protection af an orchard, but it is 
thought advantages are gained by a 
judicious system of protection by a 
hedge or a timber belt, the latter being 
better if about one quarter mile away. 
The distance to plant the trees should 
be from twenty four to thirty feet, and 


have them lean to the southwest and 
not plant too deep; this will depend 
however much upon the nature of the 
location and soil. Plow in the fall and 
plant the trees in the spring, when the 
weather becomes suddenly warm after 
the frost is out of the ground. In 
planting, place the roots carefully in 
position before the dirt is made solid. 
Keep the upper roots out of the way 
until the lower ones are arranged and 
solidly impacted with earth. The last 
dirt should be left loose and untramped. 
About pruning there appears to be 
different views, some think the weather 
is never too cold and many prefer to 
do their pruning in the winter season. 
Others think they should be pruned in 
July or August when the tree is in its 
best health. It is a good plan to wash 
the trees about the last of May with a 
mixture of five parts slacked lime and 
one part of sulphur as a protection 
against insects. The next important 
thing is to know the best varieties of 
Apples to select, without being obliged 
to experiment with too many different 
kinds, and loosing time and space in 
your orchard. Among the best varie¬ 
ties for summer use are the Red Astra- 
kan, Sops of Wine, Early Harvest and 
Harvest Red Streak. For fall, the 
Maiden Blush, Rambo, Fameuse, Dyer,, 
and the Mother which is very fine, also 
the Talman Sweet. For winter the 
Ben Davis takes the lead in beauty, 
size, productiveness, long keeper, pop¬ 
ular and profitable. The Grimes Golden 
is a much finer fruit and can be classed 
as par excellence, next Rawles Janet, 
Winesap, the Willow or Willow Twig 
as it is sometimes called, as a late keen¬ 
er, and the Jonathan is also one of the 
best winter apples. While there are 
many other varieties that are Well 
spoken of; the list mentioned taking 
all things into consideration will meet 
the wants of those seeking information 
on this subject. 











THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


555 


PRESERVING HERRING. 


The best seasons to obtain good her¬ 
ring are early in the spring, and after 
the frosts of autumn are fully set in. 
They are then not only firmer, fatter 
and more palatable; but more easily 
preserved, so as to retain their best 
flavors. The largest are taken in the 
spring—the most tender and finest fla¬ 
vored in the fall and winter. 

When first taken the scales are easily 
removed. For smoking, canning or 
preserving in oil or sousing, the re¬ 
moval of all the scales is very essential. 
u Driving” puts them in the fisherman’s 
possession alive and perfect. A little 
energetic and careful stirring about in 
a boat, basket or tub by hand, foot or 
a stiff, strong stick, as a good vigorous 
cook would stir corn or oat meal mush, 
when boiling, will insure the entire 
removal of all the scales. If this 
manipulation is neglected till the fish 
is dead, the removal of the scales be¬ 
comes not only a difficult operation 
but so laborious, tedious and expensive 
that the fish never sell for enough to 
pay for the trouble. 

So soon as caught, scaled and cleaned 
they are poured into large hogsheads 
and tubs, and sprinkled very lightly 
with salt. There is no water needed to 
form a pickle. The moisture in and 
on the fish is abundant to dissolve the 
salt and to form a pickle of sufficient 
strength to preserve the herring. Fish¬ 
ermen differ, in their judgments, just 
as much on the quantity of salt to 
44 strike ” the herring as curers of hams 
do on the quantity necessary to cure 
the ham and yet to retain its fine nat¬ 
ural flavor. The design, however, of 
all is to use only so much salt as an 
experienced cook would, to make a 
fresh fish palatable. The herring re¬ 
main in salt about 30 hours. Early 


in the morning of the second day after 
being taken, they are poured on a long 
table and all the boys, girls and men, 
connected with the establishment, sur¬ 
round this table for stringing. To 
accomplish this work, straight sticks 
three feet long and about five-eighths 
of an inch in diameter, are previously 
prepared. Cedar is preferred because 
of its straight grain, smoothness and 
elasticity. These sticks are round or 
octagon, with one end pointed. In 
stringing, the operator holds the blunt 
end of the stick in his right hand and 
with his left he seizes the fish by the 
back near the gill, which he opens 
with his left thumb, beside which he 
places the point of the stick that is 
quickly thrust through—coming out of 
the mouth. Each fish is thus sent 
back to the thumb of the right hand, 
which holds the stick. The thickness 
of the point of the thumb forms the 
gauge for the distance between each 
fish. Young persons soon become ex- 
ceedingly expert in stringing herring. 
So soon as a stick is filled it is placed 
on horizontal poles—separated a little 
less than 3 feet—and thus the fish are 
allowed to be exposed to the dry air 
until exteriorily they are thoroughly 
dry. 

All the fish put on sticks, so soon as 
properly aired, are hung in the smoke 
house. This is usualty a tall wooden 
building divided into 44 bins.” These 
are made by placing upright scantling 
on beams 6 feet from the sills and 
reaching to the rafters. To these are 
nailed smaller scantling or strips of 
boards at right angles—separated from 
each other—vertically—from 9 to 12 
inches, and horizontally a little less 
than 3 feet. These form a kind of lad¬ 
der on which two or three hands ascend 
keeping in the same bin, only near 
enough each other to pass a string of 







556 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


herring. They begin at the apex of 
the roof to hang the fish that are suffi¬ 
ciently dried. The sticks reach from 
one scantling or lath to the other and 
they are placed quite near each other. 
The u hanger” descends as he fills up 
over his head; and thus bin after bin is 
filled till the lower beams are reached, 
and so on from bin to bin till the house 
is filled. Some of the smoke houses 
hold 1,000 boxes of herring, but the 
average capacity is about 300 boxes of 
the size seen in nearly all groceries 
that keep smoked fish. The fisherman 
does not wait for a full house before 
the smoking commences. So soon as 
he fills a bin, he builds a smoldering 
fire of green hard wood and keeps it 
going steadily—moving these fires 
about according as the process proceeds 
to his satisfaction. Some partially 
cover the smouldering fires with the 
waste hemlock bark of the tan yard; 
but good beech, birch and maple wood 
are more easily obtained, near where 
fish are caught, and on the whole give 
the fish a better flavor than any other 
fuel yet discovered on the islands of 
Passamaquoddy bay, or along the coast 
of Maine. 

The herring should hang above the 
smoke till they are thoroughly dried, 
and until its skin attains a fine, bright 
golden bronze. But it is with fish as 
with meat; the smoke house is the 
best place to keep them clean, sweet 
and pure. There they never sweat, 
mold or become rancid, so long as an 
occasional dull fire is kindled. When 
boxed, the herring should be cool, dry 
and firm; and then, kept in a dry store, 
they will long retain their flavor. For 
persons of good digestion they are 
excellent food whether broiled, boiled 
or raw. In the East they are face¬ 
tiously known as “ Quoddy chickens.” 
The interior of the standard box should 


measure 18 inches long, 10 broad and 
7 deep—1260 cubic inches. In canning 
the process of catching and salting is 
the same as for smoking; but before 
putting in cans, the head, gills and 
intestines are removed. Placed in the 
can heads and points they stow very 
compactly. When filled the lid is 
soldered and an inch hole left open, the 
same as in the oyster can. The circular 
piece to cover this is prepared and 
ready for instant application. The 
cans are then placed in a large, shallow 
pan or boiler with water enough in it 
to come within a half inch of 'the top 
of the can. These are placed side by 
side with the aperture uppermost and 
the circular piece of tin ready for the 
solderer at a moment’s notice. The 
water is brought to the boiling point 
and there continued till the fish are 
cooked and the steam arising from them 
excludes all the natural air in both fish 
and can; then the aperture is closed 
and hermetically sealed. This is the 
secret of keeping fish, lobsters, meats 
and fruits of all kinds, comparatively 
sweet, fresh and pure for an indefinite 
period. The addition—when the cans 
are in the boiling water—of oil, spices, 
wine, vinegar or other condiments 
gives the special designation by which 
one class of goods is known from another. 

This mode of preserving fish, flesh, 
fowl and fruit was discovered in Maine 
and first practically demonstrated at 
Eastport—the most eastern town in 
the United States. 

THE CUTTLE FISH. 

The cuttle fish belongs to the mol- 
lusks, a branch of the animal kingdom 
distinguished for its members being 
built upon the plan of a sac. It is dis¬ 
tinguished from all other mollusks, 
such as snails, clams, etc., by having a 
very large head, a pair of large eyes, 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


557 


and a mouth furnished with a pair of 
jaws, around which are arranged, in a 
circle, eight or ten arms furnished with 
suckers. In the common cuttle fish or 
squid of our coast, the body, which is 
long and narrow, is wrapped in a mus¬ 
cular cloak or mantle, like a hag, fitting 
tightly to the back, but loose in front. 
It is closed up to the neck, where it is 
open like a loosely-fitting overcoat, 
buttoned up to the throat. Attached 
to its throat, by a bridle, is a short 
tube, open at both ends. This tube or 
siphon, can be moved about in any 
direction. The animal breathes by 
means of gills, which are attached to 
the front of the body, inside the cloak, 
and look like the ruffles of a shirt- 
bosom. By means of these gills the 
air contained in the water is breathed, 
and they answer the same purpose for 
the cuttle fish that our lungs do for us. 
In order to swim, the animal swells 
out the cloak in front, so that the 
water flows in between it and the body. 
Then it closes the cloak tightly about 
the neck, so that the onjy way the 
water can get out is through the 
siphon. Then it contracts forcibly its 
coat, and the water is driven out in a 
jet from the siphon, and the body is 
propelled in an opposite direction, like 
a rocket through the water. This 
siphon is flexible, like a water hose, 
and can be bent so as to direct the 
stream, not only forward, but sideways 
and backward, so that the animal can 
move in almost any direction, and turn 
sommersaults with perfect ease; and so 
rapidly do some cuttle fishes swim, that 
they are able to make long leaps out of 
the water. Usually, however, the ani¬ 
mal swims backward, with its long 
arms trailing behind. Our common 
cuttle fish of this coast has, in addition 
to its eight arms, two long, slender 
tenacles, which may be withdrawn 


into the body. The tail is pointed and 
furnished with a fin on each side. The 
octopods, to which the Brazilian cuttle 
fish belongs, have round, purse-like 
bodies and eight arms, united at the 
base with a web, and they swim by 
opening and shutting their arms like 
an umbrella; in this mode of swim¬ 
ming they resemble the jelly fish. 
Cuttle fishes are sometimes used for 
food by the Brazilians, and different 
species may be seen in the markets, 
where one frequently finds them still 
alive. Sometimes, as we stoop to 
examine one, its body is suddenly suf¬ 
fused with a deep pinkish glow. Be* 
fore we have the time to recover our 
surprise, this color fades, and a beauti¬ 
ful blue takes its place as rapidly as a 
blush sometimes diffuses a delicate 
cheek. The blue, perhaps, is succeeded 
by a green, and then the whole body' 
becomes pink again. One can hardly 
conceive anything more beautiful than 
this rapid play of colors, which is pro¬ 
duced by the successive distension of 
sets of little sacks containing fluids of 
colors which are situated under the 
skin. The cuttle-fish is also furnished 
with a bag containing an inky fluid, 
which, when the animal is attacked or 
pursued, it ejects into the water, thus 
completely blinding its adversary and 
effectually covering its retreat. It is 
from this fluid the color sepia is made. 
Besides carrying an ink-bottle, some 
species of cuttle fish are provided with 
a long, delicate, horny pen, which 
forms a sort of stiffener to the back. 
In some species the pen is hard, thick, 
and broad, and the cuttle fish bone of 
commerce is of this kind. The species 
found in our waters is very small, and 
not at all dangerous, being barely large 
enough to draw blood from the hand; 
but in the tropical seas they are very 
large, powerful, and dangerous. 






558 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


MANUFACTURE OF INDIAN INK. 


The term, Indian ink, although very 
ancient, is a complete misnomer. That 
employed by the French, encre de 
Chine , is the more correct and the one 
which has some tangible reference to 
the country whence this indispensable 
accessory to the drawing office is ex¬ 
ported to our shores. A brief account 
of the method of manufacturing it in 
the ancient land of Ivathay will not be 
without interest, the more especially 
as all attempts to prepare it, of an equal 
quality, in this country or on the con¬ 
tinent, have altogether failed. In times 
so remote as almost to carry us back to 
the ages of fable, the Chinese executed 
their specimens of caligraphy through 
the agency of a piece of bamboo dipped 
in a kind of black varnish. Subse¬ 
quently, while the same stylus was 
retained, the liquid was represented by 

a sirupy fluid, in which particles of a 

\ 

black stone reduced to an impalpable 
powder were held in mechanical suspen¬ 
sion. Later still, the ink assumed the 
appearance and nature of solid black 
balls, prepared from lamp black, and 
ever since their introduction this 
branch of industry has been gradually 
improved until it attained its present 
state of perfection. At the present day 
the Chinese keep their ink in sticks, 
rub it with water or tea, and write by 
means of very fine pointed pencils 
dipped in it. The quality of the ink 
varies considerably, and depends upon 
the purity of the ingredients of which 
it is composed, and the care and skill 
displayed in its preparation. Among 
the best substances from which to 
obtain the lampblack are—firstly, pig’s 
fat; secondly, ordinary oils and fats; 
and thirdly, resinous woods and resins 
themselves. Tolerably good inks are 
also made from the lampblack produced 


by the combustion of pine trees, and 
some other descriptions of timber indi¬ 
genous to the country. 

The materials from which the lamp¬ 
black is procured are placed in a fur¬ 
nace about one hundred feet in length, 
and five in breadth, along the sides 
and top of which it condenses. That 
which condenses at the extremity of 
the furnace is the best adapted for the 
manufacture of the ink, while the rest, 
which is deposited near the neighbor¬ 
hood of the combustion, is too coarse 
in grain to be employed for the pur¬ 
pose. This evidently results from two 
causes. One is the quality of the ma¬ 
terial, and the other the relative rapid¬ 
ity with which it is consumed. Hav¬ 
ing obtained the lampblack, the next 
step is to prepare a particular kind of 
paste or glue with which to form a 
compact and solid substance. The 
preparation of this glue requires a 
great deal of care and is one of the 
most important operations connected 
with the whole process. The best de¬ 
scription is made from the horns of 
deer. After removing the outer skin, 
the horns are macerated for a period of 
seven days in rice water, and then sub¬ 
jected to a long and exhausting ebulli¬ 
tion. It is only during the cold season 
of the year that this process is carried 
on, as hot weather would cause the 
fermentation of the glue and retard the 
operation. It must not be imagined 
that the lampblack is fit for use directly 
as it is taken out of the furnace. On 
the contrary, it requires to be sifted 
through silken bags, so that the grains 
may all be of the same size, or other¬ 
wise the ink would not be homogene¬ 
ous. This preliminary condition being 
insured, a certain quantity of the glue 
is melted and poured over an equal 
quantity of the other ingredient, and 
the whole thoroughly kneaded and 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


559 


incorporated by the hands. Occasion¬ 
ally a small portion of Chinese varnish 
is added, and the mixture transferred 
to an iron mortar, where it is beaten 
up with some degree of violence. The 
whole of the value of the future 
product depends, as is usual in all simi¬ 
lar instances, upon the intimacy of the 
mixture, but, at the same time, the 
operation must not be protracted to 
too great a length. It is the duty of 
the manufacturer to time the process, 
and when, through negligence or 
ignorance, the proper time has been ex¬ 
ceeded, the error is rectified by envelop¬ 
ing the ink in paper, and holding it 
before a slow fire, which restores to it 
its elasticity, and prevents it splitting. 
In spite, however, of this partial rem¬ 
edy, the ink so treated is never equal 
in quality to that which has not been 
subjected to such treatment. From 
the mortar the mixture passes into the 
hand of the molder. The molds are 
formed of wood, with a cavity corres¬ 
ponding to the form it is desired to 
give to the ink. Within certain limits 
the smaller the cakes the better, as 
there is less chance of their splitting or 
warping during the time they are dry¬ 
ing. Thus, the best cakes of Indian 
ink are never of a very large size. As 
soon as the cakes have acquired a firm 
and solid consistency, they are removed 
from the molds and dried. The desic¬ 
cation is effected by enveloping the ink 
in very fine paper, and surrounding it 
by cinders or powdered chalk. When 
the latter desicator is used, care must 
be taken that it does not abstract the 
humidity from the cake with too great 
rapidity, or the latter will become brit¬ 
tle, and lose its superior quality. The 
cakes, together with the absorbent en¬ 
velopes, are placed in a small stove, 
and kept exposed to a gentle heat for 
several days. Some manufacturers do 


not take the trouble to perform this 
last drying process; but leave the cakes 
to dry by simple exposure to the air. 

Ink of a superior quality rubs easily 
and marks upon paper, without leaving 
any apparent trace of solid matter. The 
best cakes have a brownish hue when 
rubbed. A black, gray, or blue tinge 
indicates ink of an inferior quality. 
The brown tinge will remain in cakes 
for many years after manufacture, and 
is visible in some very ancient speci¬ 
mens that exist in China. Another some¬ 
what curious test will determine the 
quality of Indian ink. If a cake of 
good quality be struck gently on a hard 
substance, the sound should be sharp. 

If it be flat, it is a sign that it is not 
homogeneous in consistency, and be¬ 
longs to a second class description. 
Moreover, the heaviest ink is the most 
valuable. The Chinese say that the 
value of lampblack depends upon its 
lightness, and that of ink upon its 
heaviness, being in the inverse ratio one 
to the other. As the ink gets older, so 
like wine, it improves in quality. It 
becomes harder without at the same 
time becoming brittle, and acquires a 
brilliancy that is highly prized by con¬ 
noisseurs. Strictly speaking, it ought 
not to be used for three years after 
manufacture. Whenever it happens 
that old ink loses in value by absorbing 
damp, it may be re-prepared by grind¬ 
ing it with a mixture of glue and water, 
but the operation is not always success¬ 
ful. In order to keep Indian ink, in 
other words to preserve it, it should be 
placed in a well-aired situation, exposed 
now and then to the action of the sun, 
and rubbed frequently on the surface to 
prevent it losing its polish. 

The manufacture of Chinese ink, to 
give it its proper term, is carried 01 K 
upon a very large scale at Shanghai, 
where a very superior description is 





560 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


prepared. The difference in quality 
between the various inks made in 
China results from the non-employ¬ 
ment of a constant material for the 
production of the lampblack. In order 
to impart an agreeable odor to the pro¬ 
duction, the Chinese add a small por¬ 
tion of musk and camphor, from the 
Isle of Borneo, two articles which are 
exceedingly dear in the Celestial em¬ 
pire. Ordinary Chinese ink for home 
use is not scented in any manner what¬ 
ever. The gilded mystic letters that 
are so attractive to young pupils and 
students are first formed by the action 
of the mold. When the cake is dry, 
the letters are traced over with a solu¬ 
tion of gelatin in water, and the gold 
or copper is laid on with a fine brush. 
Like their neighbors, the Japanese 
manufacture Indian ink, but consider 
it of a quality inferior to that which 
they obtain from the mainland. Not 
having given so much attention to the 
matter as the Celestials, they are not 
so well versed in the manner of pre¬ 
paring the lampblack, which is the real 
secret of the whole art. 


THE BIRMINGHAM DIE-SINKERS. 

Die-sinking is a most important 
branch of Birmingham industry, and 
has had an existence since the year 
1650. It is now almost wholly in the 
hands of “ garret-masters,” who work 
for the larger manufacturers, its 
wide distribution having chiefly been 
brought about during the last half- 
century. It has been well remarked, 
that as the die-sinker executes almost 
all, and in some cases quite all, his 
work for various manufacturing houses, 
he seldom gets the credit of his per¬ 
formances with the public. Some 
well-known manufacturer in Birming¬ 
ham, London, or elsewhere, brings the 


finished goods into the market, often 
stamped with his own name, and 
absorbs the praise justly due to the 
garret-master, up an entry, in a back 
street, who is the real author of the 
work. 

The principal departments of die¬ 
sinking, in Birmingham, as indicated by 
the industries in which dies are most 
largely used, are, says £ne Engineer , 
coining, medaling, button-making, 
steel seals, and ornamental metals. 

The demand for dies used in coining 
has been subject to considerable fluctua¬ 
tions, owing, in many cases, to Govern¬ 
ment interference. In 1812, dies were 
made for coining gold forty-shilling 
pieces, of which 800 were struck, the 
only gold coins ever struck in Birming¬ 
ham. They were for a banker in Read¬ 
ing, named Monk. Two millions of 
penny tokens for circulation among 
the British forces in Spain were struck, 
in the same year, from Birmingham. 
The issue of gold tokens was, accord¬ 
ing to Mr. Timmins, stopped by the 
Government at the onset, and that of 
silver, copper, and other metals was, 
with some temporary exceptions, de¬ 
clared illegal after January 1, 1819. 
The only coin now produced in Bir¬ 
mingham, is the current copper coin 
for English and foreign Governments. 

Medaling is an important industry, 
affording considerable employment to 
the Birmingham die-sinkers. The 
varieties of medals produced in com¬ 
memoration of events or individuals 
are very considerable. Royal births, 
coronations, marriages, and deaths, 
anniversaries of schools, churches, 
chapels, societies, and institutions of 
almost every kind; weddings, “sil¬ 
ver” or “golden;” laying of founda¬ 
tion stones, or inauguration of public 
buildings, of every popular hero, or as 
decorations or prizes for schools and 








561 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


colleges, or for athletic sports. It is 
noticeable, that almost every metal 
Known to manufacturing industry has 
been used, at some period or other for 
striking medals in. An excellent 
authority, in Birmingham, informs us 
that most of the ordinary medals are 
struck either in bronze or tin, the 
latter carefully refined by the medal¬ 
list, being the familiar white metal of 
the u coronation ” medals. In bronze 
medals, the process of “ bronzing,” 
which gives their peculiar color, is gen¬ 
erally performed before the medal is 
struck for the last time. 

In button-making, the labor of the 
die-sinker is chiefly expended in livery 
buttons. The figured gold buttons of 
the pig-tail period, and the sporting but¬ 
tons, both in horn and metal, fashiona¬ 
ble in the early years of her Majesty’s 
reign, many of them of exquisite work¬ 
manship, and by first-class artists, have 
now almost entirely disappeared. 

Steel seals, for public and private 
use, have enormously increased of late, 
and, as a manufacturer writes, “ the 
demand has been largely augmented 
by the limited joint-stock companies 
recently sprung into existence.” The 
enormous development of the envelope 
trade, and the equivalent demand for 
stamped note paper, have opened up 
for the die-sinker quite a new field of 
enterprise. 

Dies for the stamping of ornamental 
metals are used, of almost every sort 
and size, varying from two ounces to 
two tons in weight. A practical maker 
remarks that the heavy dies are for the 
most part cast, and only finished (if 
finished at all) with the graver or in 
the lathe. Among the largest dies 
principally worked by the graver, are 
those for brass handles and feet, cur¬ 
tain poles, and cornice ornaments. 

The process employed, says Mr. 


Timmins, are simple, though frequently 
demanding the exercise of great artis¬ 
tic skill and delicacy of manipulation. 
In ordinary cases a piece of steel is cast 
of the requisite shape, round which a 
collar of iron is welded, in order to 
prevent the steel cracking when hard¬ 
ened. The surface being prepared, the 
die-sinker sketches his design upon it, 
and engraves it, employing for the pur¬ 
pose, gravers with edges of three differ¬ 
ent shapes—one straight, with the 
corners rounded, and one semi-circular 
—some forty or fifty sizes of each o^ 
these three kinds of gravers being 
required to suit the varying character 
of the work, and the special treatment 
demanded in the several portions of the 
die. When the engraving is finished, 
the die is heated and suddenly hardened 
by cooling; the surface is polished by 
u lapping,” and it is then ready for use 
in the stamp or press. 


SADDLES. 

Saddles are not of very ancient in¬ 
vention. In the time of Alexander 
Severus, as stated by Lampridus, the 
horses of the whole Roman cavalry 
had beautiful coverings, and these ap¬ 
pear to have been employed generally 
by the natives of the East. Xenophon 
reproaches the Persians because they 
placed more clothes on the backs of 
their horses than on their beds. These 
coverings appear to have been grad- 
uallv transformed into saddles, the in- 
vention of which Beckmann thinks 
may be referred to the middle of the 
fourth century. The Emperor Theo¬ 
dosius, in 385, by an order restricted 
the weight of those used for post 
horses to sixty pounds. Stirrups for 
supporting the feet hung at the sides of 
the saddle itself as is supposed, some 
time in the sixth century. Roman 









562 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


youths were taught to vault on horse¬ 
back, and mounting-blocks or stones 
were generally provided along the 
roads for the convenience of ladies and 
other persons, and portable stools were 
also used. People of rank were as¬ 
sisted by servants; horses, too, were 
trained to kneel, and spears or lances 
were furnished with a step, or projec¬ 
tion or a loop of leather for the foot. 
The saddles, bridles and trappings used 
by the English in the thirteenth cen¬ 
tury are represented by Strutt as dif¬ 
fering little from those of the present 
time except in the depth of the seat of 
the saddle. The Saxon and Norman 
women of that period, whenever they 
are represented on horseback, are seated 
sideways agreeable to the present cus¬ 
tom. The saddles of the old cavaliers 
were remarkable for their high peaks 
before and behind, the seat being a deep 
Lollow between them, and thus very 
secure. This form is still preferred by 
Spaniards and Mexicans, and also for 
militmy saddles, to the pommel of 
^hich are attached the leather holsters 
for pistols. The McClellan saddle used 
by the United States cavalry is a mod¬ 
ification of it, and is one of the favor¬ 
ite saddles now in use. 


WIRE MAKING. 

It has been suggested by Beckmann 
that wire was first formed by cutting 
up sheets of metal into thin strips. 
Wire work is but rarely mentioned in 
the writings of the ancients, and in the 
few cases that do occur, the metal ap¬ 
pears to have been wrought on the 
anvil. In the more modern works on 
Technology no mention is made of the 
draw-plate. In the history of Augs¬ 
burg of the date 1351, and in that of 
Nuremburg, 1360, the artists who fab¬ 
ricated wire by means of the hammer 


are called wire-smiths; but as the terrr 
wire-drawer (drahlzicher) also occurs in 
these works, it is evident that the draw* 
plate had been invented, but had not 
entirely superseded the ancient method. 
In France the invention is ascribed ti 
one Richard Arclial, and iron wire is 
called in that country fil d 1 Arclial and 
also fil de Richard. It is stated that 
wire was manufactured by hand in 
England until the year 1565 when 
one Christopher Schultz, a Saxon, in 
company with other foreigners, came 
to that country under the permission 
granted by Queen Elizabeth to stran¬ 
gers to dig for metalic ores, and intro¬ 
duced the drawing-plate. Previous to 
this the supply of iron wire together 
with the combs employed by the wool- 
combers were chiefly obtained from 
abroad. In the reign of Charles I., it 
is stated in a proclamation that iron 
wire is a manufacture long practiced in 
the realm, whereby many thousands of 
our subjects have been employed, and 
that English wire is made of the tough¬ 
est and best Osmond iron, a native 
commodity of this kingdom, and is 
much better than what comes from for¬ 
eign parts, especially for making wool- 
cards, without which no good cloth can 
be made. And, whereas, complaints 
have been made by the wire-drawers 
of this kingdom that by reason of 
the great quantities of foreign iron 
wire lately imported, our said subjects 
cannot be set at work; therefore we 
prohibit the importation of foreign 
iron wire and wool-cards made thereof, 
as also hooks and eyes and other man- 
manufactures made of foreign wire. 
Neither shall any translate and trim 
up any old wool-cards nor sell the same 
at home or abroad. Previous to the 
introduction of grooved rollers the rods 
of iron intended for wire-drawing were 
hammered out to the required size. 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


503 


The best iron was used for the purpose, 
and was sold in rods of about the 
thickness of the little finger, made up 
into bundles and called asteom or 
esteom iron, or, as in the proclamation 
of Charles I., Osmund or Orsmund 
iron. In the modern process the rods 
are prepared for the wire-drawer at the 
rolling mill or for some metals by cast¬ 
ing, and are generally about the eighth 
of an inch in diameter; they are sold 
to the wire-drawer in coils. In order 
to reduce or draw out the rod into a 
great length of wire, a number of op¬ 
erations are performed upon it so as to 
effect the object gradually. The rod is 
first dragged forcibly through a hole in 
the draw-plate of somewhat less diam¬ 
eter than itself, and as the metal of 
the draw-plate is harder than the rod, 
the latter gives way and becomes ex¬ 
tended in length, the substance of the 
metal is partly kept back, as in a wave, 
by a narrow ridge within the draw-plate 
acting as a burnisher. This length¬ 
ened wire is again passed through a hole 
smaller than itself, and thus again 
elongated. 


THE DIYINIJNG EOI). 

“It is stated by some writers, and 
believed in some districts, that the 
backs of lodes may be followed by par¬ 
ticular plants or herbs growing on 
them. There is some foundation for 
this idea, but it must not be taken as of 
unlimited application. The lode is 
composed of materials different from 
the ground at its sides; and if softer 
it will be lower, and the water will 
naturally flow along it, making the 
herbage brighter and greener, and 
nourishing a certain class of plants 
which will not grow on the dryer and 
harder soil adjacent. Quartzose vein¬ 
stone often contains iron pyrites, which 


are decomposed by exposure to air, and 
soon producing a somewhat higher 
temperature, so that snow will melt 
sooner, and rime and hoar frost will not 
lie so long upon the line of the lode, 
and so indicate its presence. In some 
places it will not require a very acute 
sense of smelling to detect the presence 
of a lode by the nose; and anyone who 
has visited such mining districts as 
those of Wicklow, which abound in 
pyrites, will remember the peculiar 
odor which prevails. In some places 
sulphurous acid arising from the de¬ 
composed lodes may be distinctly 
tasted. It has also been affirmed, not 
only in that country and in Hungary, 
but in late times in the United States, 
that lodes have been discovered and 
traced out by means of luminous 
coruscations playing along them. You 
will find statements of this kind in 
Pryce’s 4 Mineralogia Cornubiensis,’ on 
the authority of credible observers. 
The mine of Nagybanya, in Transyl¬ 
vania, which is rich in gold and tel¬ 
lurium, was, it is said, discovered by 
appearances of this sort. Another 
curious method of searching for lodes 
is that by means of the 4 dowsing rod.’ 
Those who are inquisitive on the sub- 
juct will find interesting details re¬ 
specting this system in a curious book 
published in 1826 by the Count de 
Tristram, and in 1854 an ingenious 
book was published on the same sub¬ 
ject by M. Chevreuil, a member of the 
French Academy, 4 On the Bagnette 
Divinatorie (as the French call it); its 
Use,’ etc., which combated the objec¬ 
tion raised to the divining rod as a pure 
deception, and ascribed its action to 
philosophic causes. The 4 dowsing ’ or 
4 divining’ rod is a forked stick of some 
fruit-bearing wood, generally hazel, 
held by the extremity of each prong of 
the fork in a peculiar way. The 








5G4 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


* dowser ’ then walks over the country 
he is to try, and when he approaches a 
mineral deposit the thicker end or 
handle of the fork turns down in spite, 
it is said, of all the efforts of the holder 
to the contrary, and points to the lode. 
There is no doubt that, owing to the 
way in which it is held, it has, when 
once it begins to move, a mechanical 
tendency to turn. As a general fact, 
however, it may be taken that it has 
not led to the discovery of any valu¬ 
able lodes, and I am inclined to agree 
with the old author, Agricola, who says 
‘That a miner ought not to use this 
enchanted rod, because I want him to 
be a man skillful in other means, 
learned in geology and minerology, and 
able to give a right judgment as to the 
locality of the lodes without resorting 
to this questionable art.’ Although it 
seems unnecessary to discuss seriously 
anything so doubtful as this ‘ divining 
rod,’ many eminent persons have be¬ 
lieved in it. A very clever man, Mr. 
Cookworthy, of Plymouth, the first 
man to apply to useful purposes the 
china clay of Cornwall, was a great 
adept at the use of the ‘ divining rod, 1 
and a French ecclesiastic in 1862 was 
making a handsome income by discov¬ 
ering springs of water by its aid. A 
case occurred in Cornwall in which 
what is called the Chiverton lode was 
said to have been discovered by the 
‘divining rod. 111 


THE FIRST SILK HAT. 

Its Invention over Ninety Years Ago. 

The first silk hat, made of plush, was 
manufactured by George Dunnage in 
England, in the year 1794. Dunnage 
appears to have been a hatter of an 
inventive turn of mind, for he also 
made a ventilating hat, in which the 


tip was made separate from the side 
crown, with whalebone slides, which 
allowed it to be raised or shut down at 
the pleasure of the wearer. 

Dunnage called his silk hat a “ water¬ 
proof hat in imitation of beaver, 11 and 
it is described in the Repertory of Arts, 
vol. 4, page 302. In this description it 
is announced that “ the hat is made of 
shag, woven of such count in the reed 
and cut over such sized wire as will 
give the hats to be manufactured from 
it that degree of richness or appear¬ 
ance of fur which maybe thought nec¬ 
essary. 11 The materials to answer this 
purpose best were those “ made with 
two poles, either of bergam, Piedmont 
or organzine silk, rising alternately in a 
reed of about nine hundred count to 
eighteen inches wide, with three shoots 
over each wire. 11 

This silk shag, or plush, was stretched 
on a dyer’s frame and the pile set up¬ 
right with a comb. The back of the 
plush was then stiffened with size 
made of isinglass or kid leather. After 
the size dried the plush was carded with 
a fine card until it was completely 
taken out of the twist or throwing. 

The plush was then, while still on 
the frame, “ water-proofed 11 on its back 
by applying to it several coats of “ lin¬ 
seed oil well boiled, thickened with a 
small quantity of any good drying 
color. 11 For very fine colors the in¬ 
ventor recommended poppy oil or copal 
varnish. This was put on until all the 
pores of the material were completely 
filled up. After it was aired, and the 
odor of the oils completely gone, the 
superfluous grease was removed from 
the plush with ox-gall or lime water. 

The plush was then ready for hat¬ 
making. The crown was “ made over 
a block with a needle and silk, the oiled 
side downwards. 11 The seams were 
flattened, and “ the edges of the stuff 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


505 


pared off very near the stiches.” The 
seams were then gone over with the 
prepared oil, and the crown turned. It 
was then stiffened on the inside by 
sticking to it any suitable substance for 
a body. The sticking . substance was 
made of a paste of gum arabic, starch 
and glue. 

Dunnage also gives directions for 
making and joining the brim, and the 
hat was then “loured 11 (veloured) and 
dressed in the same manner as felt 
hats. 

A silk hat was made on a wire body 
in Glasgow some twenty years after 
Dunnage’s invention. 


COBALT—ITS PROPERTIES AND USES. 

v 

In olden times the word cobalt was 
used to designate a whole group of 
worthless metals. The miners of those 
days were full of superstition, and im¬ 
agined that the genii of the mountains 
would resist all attempts to penetrate 
their mysteries, and hence they were 
supposed to throw all sorts of false ores 
and unripe metal in the way of the 
workmen for the sake of discouraging 
them from their undertaking. The 
name of the mountain gnome or sprite 
was Kobold, and hence the miners 
called the worthless ore “ Cobalt.” 
The bright shiny ore that vexed the 
workmen so much was at one time 
supposed to contain bismuth, and was 
very little used. 

These are the first recorded notions, 
but there is little doubt that cobalt 
ores were used for coloring glass some 
thousands of years before, in Nineveh, 
Thebes, and Pompeii, as specimens 
found in those places resemble the 
beads and ornaments of modern times. 

The first really authentic discovery 
of cobalt appears to have been made in 
1735, by the Swedish chemist Brandt, 


who called it Cobalt King. Chemical 
analysis had not attained sufficient 
progress in that early day to enable 
any one to separate the constituents of 
ores with absolute certainty, and it was 
not until 1780 that the existence of 
cobalt was confirmed by Bergmann. 
Cobalt is one of the metals found in 
the atmosphere of the sun, and in the 
materials that are of extra mundane 
origin. It usually occurs associated 
with nickel, arsenic, and sulphur, and 
is frequently an incidental product in 
the working of copper, bismuth and 
nickel ores. 

The best known minerals are smal- 
tine, called also speiss cobalt, cobaltine, 
or glance cobalt, cobalt bloom and 
earthy cobalt. The fact that some of 
the minerals contain arsenic has lead 
to applying the name of cobalt to the 
black arsenic sold as a fly powder. It 
will be seen from the above list that 
this element is by no means so abun¬ 
dant as manganese or nickel, and in 
the event of its being required for cer¬ 
tain purposes in the arts, it would be 
difficult to obtain it in large quantity. 

There are several ways in which me¬ 
tallic cobalt can be prepared from its 
compounds, one of the earliest ot 
which was from the oxalate. It is pos¬ 
sible to reduce the oxide by heating 
two parts of the pure oxide of cobalt 
and one part of pure cream of tartar, 
for six hours, in a covered crucible 
lined with charcoal and at a temperature 
sufficient to melt steel. The regulus 
obtained in this way is exceedingly 
hard and brittle, and has the color of 
bismuth, is magnetic, and has a specific 
gravity of 8.43. By re-melting in a 
clay crucible it can be freed from car¬ 
bon, and it then has a silver-white 
color, specific gravity of 8.754, is 
softer than steel, very elastic, does not 
oxidize in air, nor after several days T 









566 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


immersion in water, and is as magnetic 
as iron. Becquerel found that by 
electrolysis a brilliant white metal goes 
to the negative electrode when the 
chloride of cobalt is first neutralized 
with ammonia. Prepared in this way 
it is quite pure, and is malleable and 
magnetic. By treating an aqueous 
solution of the chloride of cobalt with 
sodium amalgam, an amalgam of co¬ 
balt is formed from which the mercury 
can be expelled, and the cobalt ob¬ 
tained in the condition of a fine pow¬ 
der; it can afterwards be fused to a 
pure regulus. 

The above are the chief methods for 
obtaining the pure metal, and we can 
now pass to the consideration of some 
of its properties. 

The metal resembles steel, with a 
slight red tinge, is very hard, and is 
said by Deville to be more tenacious 
than iron. This latter property may 
hereafter give a value to wires made of 
cobalt where it is required to attain 
great strength in small compass. 
Arsenic and manganese render it brit¬ 
tle. Like pure iron it requires a very 
high heat to melt it, and the tempera¬ 
ture of fusion appears to be between 
that of iron and gold. Its specific heat 
is 0.1096, and its density ranges be¬ 
tween 8.513 and 8.7. 

It is said to be magnetic when per¬ 
fectly pure, and can be converted into a 
magnet by contact. At a very high 
temperature cobalt burns with a red 
flame yielding an oxide. Acids gener¬ 
ally dissolve cobalt, nitric acid being 
especially adapted to this purpose. 
The metal decomposes water at a red 
heat, but not at ordinary temperatures. 
Plunged into fuming nitric acid, it is 
converted into the passive state, the 
same as iron, and the duration of this 
passive state is augmented by previ¬ 
ously heating the metal. 


Antimony and cobalt fused together 
evolve heat and light, and afford an 
iron-gra} r alloy. The alloy of cobalt 
and iron is exceedingly hard. Gold 
and cobalt yield a yellow and very 
fragile alloy. 

The alloy of platinum and cobalt is 
fusible. Cobalt amalgam is white, like 
silver. Silver is rendered brittle by it. 
Alloys of lead and cobalt, and tin and 
cobalt, have been made but possess little 
interest. 

Many chemists suppose nickel to be 
an alloy of cobalt and some other 
metal. Fairbairn found that the tenac¬ 
ity of cast iron was greatly reduced by 
its mixture with nickel, and the same 
result is probable in the case of cobalt. 
Cobalt is said to reduce copper from 
solutions. Weiske found that cobalt 
was contained in nearly every brand of 
commercial iron he examined, some¬ 
times to the extent of seven grammes 
in 100 pounds. 

Finely divided metallic cobalt is sol¬ 
uble in a boiling solution of caustic 
potash, and yields a blue liquid which is 
supposed to contain cobaltic acid. The 
finely divided cobalt for this purpose is 
prepared by heating an intimate mix¬ 
ture of pure oxide with ten or twelve 
per cent, starch meal, or by reducing 
the oxide with hydrogen. 

Cobalt contaminated with phos¬ 
phorus has a different color from ordi¬ 
nary metal, and loses its lustre in the 
air. 

We can now speak of some of the 
compounds of cobalt that find applica¬ 
tion in the arts. The oxides and salts 
are distinguished for their beautiful 
colors—red, blue, yellow, green—hence 
they were early used for pigments. 

If a little oxide of cobalt be added to 
melted glass, we obtain a mass, which, 
after cooling is intensely blue. When 
this is ground to powder it yields the 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


567 


well-known smalt that at one time was 
extensively employed by papermakers 
and in the laundry. The color is very 
fast, as it is not affected by the atmos¬ 
phere or by acids or other liquids—and 
this fact aliorded a method of detecting 
adulterations, as sand or pulverized 
glass, which was simply immersed in 
some coloring liquid, could easily be 
washed clean by an acid. 

Since the extensive and cheap man¬ 
ufacture of artificial ultramarine, was 
established, the demand, and naturally 
the supply, of smalt, have greatly dim¬ 
inished. There is another blue color 
formed by the union of alumina and 
the oxide of cobalt, known as Thenard’s 
blue, which has long been applied in 
the arts, but in consequence of its high 
price cannot compete with ultramarine. 
It can be prepared by mixing 3 parts 
freshly precipitated moist phosphate or 
arsenate of cobalt with 12 to 15 parts 
also freshly precipitated hydrate of 
alumina, and exposing, after drying, to 
a red heat. Thus produced it is a com¬ 
pact, insoluble mass, which can be 
ground to a fine blue powder. Rin- 
mann’s green, which is a compound of 
the oxides of zinc and cobalt, we des¬ 
cribed under the head of the compounds 
of zinc. It is a much-prized green pig¬ 
ment. A beautiful yellow color is 
produced by mixing the nitrite of pot¬ 
ash with a solution of cobalt. A double 
nitrite of cobalt and potash is produced 
in the form of an insoluble yellow crys¬ 
talline body, which is not only of value 
as a color but offers a remarkably 
delicate test for the presence of cobalt 
in solutions. This yellow has been 
used sparingly, on account of the ex¬ 
pense, in aquarelle and oil painting. 

By precipitating cobalt with phos¬ 
phate of soda we have a red violet color, 
the shade of which varies according to 
the temperature at which it is* prepared. 


A fine cobalt brown is produced by 
calcining a mixture of sulphate of 
cobalt, ammonia, and iron. 

Some of the salts of cobalt, when 
they contain water, are red, when they 
are anhydrous they appear blue. This 
property is made use of in what is 
called sympathetic ink. If we write 
with a dilute solution of chloride of 
cobalt on paper and allow the tracing 
to dry at ordinary temperatures, the 
letters will scarcely be visible. Upon 
the application of heat the writing be¬ 
comes visible, with a blue color, or 
sometimes green if nickel be present. 
The color again disappears on the 
absorption of moisture. 

A fine green color is produced by 
precipitating cobalt from its solutions 
by means of a mixture of prussic acid 
and potash, but the cost of production 
must prevent any extensive application 
of this color. 

Since the discovery of photography, 
the use of cobalt blue glass has greatly 
increased. It is an interesting fact in 
optics that blue glass permits all of 
the chemical rays of light to pass freely 
through it, while the yellow rays are 
intercepted. Pieces of blue glass are 
used to eliminate the yellow rays when 
the colors of flames are to be examined 
for the violet hue of potash, and in 
other cases of optical research. 

The oxide of cobalt, prepared by pre¬ 
cipitating the chloride with potassa, 
has been employed in rheumatism. It 
is emetic in the dose of 10 to 20 grains. 
The salts of cobalt are irritant poisons. 

The employment of metallic cobalt 
in the manufacture of German silver 
would make that article too expensive 
for general use, but in small quantities 
it enters into alloys in association with 
nickel as an incidental component. 
The deposition of metallic cobalt by the 
battery can be accomplished the same 






5G8 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


as is now so extensively done with 
nickel, and this method is sometimes 
resorted to, to procure small quantities 
of the metal. Some of the salts of 
cobalt are of great value to the chemist 
in his laboratory, as affording delicate 
tests for the presence of other bodies. 

One of the methods for the manufac¬ 
ture of oxygen gas from bleaching 
powders, is founded upon the somewhat 
obscure formation and subsequent 
decomposition of cobaltic acid. A very 
small quantity of a solution of cobalt 
suffices to evolve all of the oxygen from 
chloride of lime. 


HISTORY AND MANUFACTURE OF 

SAWS. 

The saw was doubtless used among 
the Hebrews for the cutting of wood, 
though this is not mentioned in the 
Bible. It was used for the cutting of 
stone and also as an instrument of 
punishment. The ancient Egyptians 
made use of saws of bronze, and ap¬ 
plied them to cutting out planks from 
logs. The saws were single-handed, 
like those now used by carpenters, and 
the log to be cut by them was placed 
on end and firmly secured to posts set 
in the ground. The inventor of the 
saw was deified by the Greeks and 
called by some Talus and by others 
Perdix. Having once found the jaw¬ 
bone of a snake, he employed it to cut 
through a small piece of wood; and by 
these means was induced to form a like 
instrument of iron,—that is to make a 
saw. This invention, which greatly 
facilitates labor, excited the envy of 
his master and instigated him to put 
Talus to death privately. Upon being 
asked by some one, when he was bury¬ 
ing the body, what he was depositing 
in the earth, he replied, a serpent. This 
suspicious answer discovered the mur¬ 


der. The saws of the Grecian carpen¬ 
ters were made like the straight frame 
saws of modern times, the blade set 
across the middle of the frame with 
the teeth perpendicular to its plane. 

Saw blades cannot be too good; the 
various operations they have to pass 
through u punishes” the steel so much, 
so to speak, that unless it is entirely 
uniform in quality and homogeneous 
throughout, it will never be satisfac¬ 
tory, or do good service. 

The steel is melted in crucibles as in 
all other steel works, and rolled into 
sheets subsequently. The ingots for 
cross cut saws are of peculiar shape, 
however, and after being cast are sub¬ 
jected to a thorough forging under 
heavy hammers to render them tough 
and uniform throughout. Circular 
saws are also formed from ingots vary¬ 
ing in weight from ordinary sizes up to 
300 pounds. These are forged out un¬ 
der very heavy steam hammers, and 
subsequently reduced to the proper 
thickness by rolling in the ordinary 
way. After being rolled, they are laid 
out and brought to the proper size and 
then straightened into perfectly flat 
disks. This straightening is an art, ot 
a branch of the art, peculiar to itself, 
as any inexperienced person can readily 
discover by undertaking to straighten, 
or “ take the buclde out,” of a piece of 
sheet metal. He will straighten one 
edge and and make the other crooked, 
or the centre will bulge out; in short, 
all his labor comes to nought, for the 
more he hammers it injudiciously the 
more mischief he does, and he will ac¬ 
knowledge that there is skill and judg¬ 
ment required for so apparently 
simple an act as straightening a saw 
plate. 

Toothing the saw, in the case of the 
circular and larger blades, is done un¬ 
der a hand press by punching them in 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


569 


an obvious manner; but with the ordi¬ 
nary carpenters 1 saw, and those for 
wood sawing, the teeth are cut in a 
machine with extreme rapidity. They 
are fed through in front of a rapidly 
revolving cutter, at a certain speed, 
which nicks out one tooth at every rev¬ 
olution, so that the rapidity with which 
the teeth are made is marvelous to the 
uninitiated. The attendant stated that 
the average rate was about twelve saws 
per minute. 

When the saw blades have been 
passed though the necessary processes 
previously, they are tempered, ground 
and polished. The hardening is done 
by plunging the heated plates into oil 
baths. The tempering is quite a differ¬ 
ent and distinct operation, and one 
extremely interesting in all respects* 
The thin plates leave the oil baths at a 
viterous hardness, glass hard, in fact, so 
that when struck over an anvil they 
will fly into fragments. This quality 
has to be taken from them and the 
requisite elasticity and toughness im¬ 
parted instead. 

Further, when the blades come out 
of the oil baths wherein they are hard¬ 
ened, they are more or less buckled or 
crooked, some of them much more than 
less, and any one but an expert would 
say that the material was spoiled; but 
this defect is soon remedied. The hard¬ 
ened plates are removed to a burning 
fiery furnace quite as uncomfortable as 
the one of old wherein Shadrach and 
his brethren tarried awhile. In this 
furnace there is a cast iron disk made 
perfectly true on its upper face and 
supported by a vertical shaft. This 
shaft is capable of being raised and 
lowered with the die by a hydraulic 
ram beneath. Over this die is another 
—the two constituting a pair of highly 
heated platens, or hot press. When 
the die is hot enough, the previously 


hardened saw blades are placed on it, a 
dozen or so at a time, and the two are 
brought together with a force of six 
tons, which has not only the effect 
of drawing the temper of the blades 
to a proper degree of toughness, but 
also of taking out all the warp and 
curl, so that they are to the uninitiated 
observer “good enough; 11 they are not 
good enough for the critical workmen, 
however, who show you that, although 
apparently correct and true, they are 
still far from perfect. 

The plates leave the hot dies of a 
dull, dead black, and have to be pol¬ 
ished and otherwise brought to a better 
finish. The polishing is done with 
emery, in machines or rubbers with a 
reciprocating motion which imparts 
that fine, straight grain observable in 
the blades. This operation also has the 
effect of taking the spring out of the 
blades, so that if bent or twisted by 
accident in using them, a permanent 
injury would result. They are there¬ 
fore put through another process,which 
is merely heating them, in an oven, to 
a straw color. This restores all the 
stiffness lost in polishing and handling 
them after they were tempered. The 
color put on them in the oven is re¬ 
moved by washing them with acid. 
After this they are immersed in an al¬ 
kali to destroy the effects of the acid, 
dried in sawdust and handed over to 
the handlers. 

Circular saws are ground as they are 
used in the mill. They are suspended 
vertically and ground on both sides at 
once, the other processes they pass 
through being identical with those pre¬ 
viously described. Mill and cross cut 
saws are ground on a curious looking 
apparatus, which is in fact a quadrant. 
The saw is held on the arc of the 
quadrant, which receives a vibratory 
motion on its axis by suitable mechan- 




570 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ism, and the stone revolves against it, 
having, in addition, a sidewise motion 
imparted, so that it travels across the 
face of the saw, making it wholly equal 
in all parts. 

The handles are made of domestic 
woods, chiefly beech and apple, and are 
first sawn out on a belt saw and after¬ 
ward rounded, rasped, and bored in a 
manner that will be readily compre¬ 
hended by most workmen. 


HARDENING SAWS AND SPRINGS. 

Saws and springs are generally hard¬ 
ened in various compositions of oil, 
suet, wax, and other ingredients, which, 
however, loose their hardening property 
after a few weeks’ constant use: the 
saws are heated in long furnaces, and 
then immersed horizontally and edge¬ 
wise in a long trough containing the 
composition; two troughs are com¬ 
monly used, the one until it gets too 
warm, then the other for a period, and 
so on alternately. Part of the compo¬ 
sition is wiped off the saws with a piece 
of leather, when they are removed from 
the trough, and they are heated, one 
by one, over a clear coke fire, until the 
grease inflames; this is called “ blazing 
off.” 

The composition used by an experi¬ 
enced saw maker is two pounds of suet 
and a quarter of a pound of beeswax to 
every gallon of whale oil; these are 
boiled together, and will serve for thin 
works and most kinds of steel. The 
addition of black resin, to the extent 
of about one pound to the gallon, 
makes it serve for thicker pieces and 
for those it refused to harden before; 
but the resin should be added with 
judgment, or the works will become 
too hard and brittle. The composition 
is useless when it has been constantly 
employed for about a month; the 


period depends, however, on the extent 
to which it is used, and the trough 
should be thoroughly cleansed out be¬ 
fore new mixture is placed in it. 

The following recipe is recom¬ 
mended: 

Twenty gallons of spermaceti oil; 
twenty pounds of beef suet, rendered; 
one gallon of neat’s foot oil; one pound 
of pitch; three pounds of black resin. 

These last two articles must be pre¬ 
viously melted together, and then 
added to the other ingredients; when 
the whole must be heated in a proper 
iron vessel, with a close cover fitted to 
it, until the moisture is entirely evapo¬ 
rated, and the composition will take 
fire on a flaming body being presented 
to its surface, but which must be 
instantly extinguished again by put¬ 
ting on the cover of the vessel. 

When the saws are wanted to be 
rather hard, but little of the grease is 
burned off; when milder, a larger por¬ 
tion ; and for a spring temper, the whole 
is allowed to burn away. 

When the work is thick, or irregu¬ 
larly thick and thin, as in some springs, 
a second and third dose is burned off, 
to insure equality of temper at all parts 
alike. 

Gun-lock springs are sometimes lit¬ 
erally tried in oil for a considerable 
time over a fire in an iron tray; the 
thick parts are then sure to be suffi¬ 
ciently reduced, and the thin parts do 
not become the more softened from the 
continuance of the blazing heat. 

Springs and saws appear to lose their 
elasticity, after hardening and temper¬ 
ing, from the reduction and friction 
they undergo in grinding and polish¬ 
ing. Toward the conclusion of the 
manufacture, the elasticity of the saw 
is restored, principally by hammering, 
and partly by heating it over a clear 
coke fire to a straw color; the tint is 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


571 


removed by very diluted muriatic acid, 
after which the saws are well washed 
in plain water and dried. 

Watch springs are hammered out of 
round steel wire, of suitable diameter, 
until they fill the gage for width, which, 
at the same time, insures equality of 
thickness; the holes are punched in 
their extremities, and they are trimmed 
on the edge with a smooth file; the 
springs are then tied up with a binding 
wire, in a loose, open coil, and heated 
over a charcoal fire upon a perforated 
revolving plate, they are hardened in 
oil, and blazed ofi. 

The spring is now distended in a 
long metal frame, similar to that used 
for a saw blade, and ground and pol¬ 
ished with emery and oil, between lead 
blocks; by this time its elasticity ap¬ 
pears quite lost, and it may be bent in 
any direction; its elasticity is, however, 
entirely restored by a subsequent ham¬ 
mering on a very bright anvil, which 
“puts the nature into the spring.” 

The coloring is done over a flat plate 
of iron, or hood, under which a little 
spirit lamp is kept burning; the spring 
is continually drawn backward and 
forward, about two or three inches at 
a time, until it assumes the orange or 
deep blue tint throughout, according 
to the taste of the purchaser; by many, 
the coloring is considered to be a mat¬ 
ter of ornament, and not essential. 
The last process is to coil the spring 
into the spiral form, that it may enter 
the barrel in which it is to be con¬ 
tained; this is done by a tool with a 
small axis and winch handle, and does 
not require heat. 

The balance springs of marine chro¬ 
nometers, which are in the form of a 
screw, are wound into the square 
thread of a screw of the appropriate 
diameter and coarseness; the two ends 
of the spring are retained by side 


screws, and the whole is carefully en¬ 
veloped in platinum foil, and tightly 
bound with wire. The mass is next- 
heated in a piece of gun barrel, closed 
at one end, and plunged into oil, which 
hardens the spring almosi without dis¬ 
coloring it, owing to the exclusion of 
the air bv the close platinum covering, 
which is now removed, and the spring 
is let down to the blue before removal 
from the screwed block. 

The balance or hair springs of com¬ 
mon watches are frequently left soft; 
those of the best watches are hardened 
in the coil, upon a plain cylinder, and 
are then curled into the spiral form 
between the edge of a blunt knife and 
the thumb, the same as in curling up a 
narrow ribbon of paper, or the fila¬ 
ments of an ostrich feather. 


UMBREILA ODDITIES* 

Of the umbrella, tnese are a few of 
the curious ideas which have been de¬ 
veloped by men who have paid particu¬ 
lar attention to the subject during the 
past century. Among the oddest of 
the oddities we mention, first, that of 
Florentine Delmas, who not many 
years since made a band of sponges 
united with cords, which he proposed 
to attach to umbrellas, to prevent the 
rain that runs down “ the umbrella’s 
oily shed ” from dripping on the wearer 
or those persons near him. “When 
the sponges are filled,” says Delmas, 
u they can be taken off and squeezed 
dry.” It is almost unnecessary to add 
that Delmas did not make a success of 
his “ absorber.” 

In 1787 Thomas Folgam, of London, 
advertised in the journals of the day 
that he prepared all kinds of common 
umbrellas in a particular way so th& 
they would never stick together. FoL 
gam’s plan to prevent sticking, how 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


572 

ever, was not evidently a success, for 
thirty years after, we find that Samuel 
Jean Pauly, tired of sticky oiled silk 
and glazed cotton covers, proposed to 
make a cover, without seams, of the 
u peritonal coat, membrane, or cover¬ 
ing of the coecum, or blind-gut of 
animals,” preferably those of oxen. 
The skins were soaked in water, placed 
wet on a model, and joined by laying 
the edges of one upon another. The 
glutinous nature of the skins consoli¬ 
dated the seams. When dry, the 
whole was varnished. 

(jutters on umbrellas for carrying off 
rain have been invented by several 
persons. A. B. Caldwell, of this city, 
who is not in the trade, patented this 
invention some years ago, but a French¬ 
man named Didot, patented the same 
in the year 1809 in France. Didot had 
the water collect at any convenient 
point in the gutter, and discharge 
through a conduit into a reservoir 
located on the stick or from a lip at the 
circumference. James Willis, who 
invented a number of improvements to 
umbrellas to prevent water from drip¬ 
ping from the forward tips upon the 
person carrying the umbrella, made a 
gutter in the forward part of the cover 
to divert the water laterally and cause 
it to fall from the side tips. This was 
done by jointing the rib and connecting 
the jointed piece to the stretcher by a 
rod, or by making the rib elastic and 
leading a cord along its length, which 
would bend up the end of the rib. 

Manilius Kurts had an almanac 
attached to a spindle which was placed 
in the stick. The spindle was acted on 
by toothed wheels, so that it could be 
turned daily to the proper date. 

It is not long since that three men, 
named Pond, Richardson, and Morse, 
exercised their genius upon the inser¬ 
tion of glass windows between the ribs 


of an umbrella, and also u platanized ” 
one surface of the glass, so that the 
person carrying it could see who was 
approaching, and yet his own face 
would be out of sight. 

Samuel Stocker believed in having 
port holes in his umbrella, so he at¬ 
tached a curtain to it or had the cover 
made long enough to form a curtain 
and in this curtain he had a hole to see 
through. 

Nearly one hundred years ago, Mark 
Bull invented an umbrella with a ball- 
and-socket joint, for the use of persons 
riding in saddles or in carriages. He 
called it a machine for supporting an 
umbrella which may be fixed to any 
saddle or wheeled carriage, being far 
more complete than anything hitherto 
invented.” It was undoubtedly the 
pioneer of those graceful attachments 
to wagons now known as the Phaeton 
and other carriage umbrellas. 

Many other oddities have exercised 
the brains of umbrella inventors, but 
the above are the most curious of any 
which have been recorded. Hollow 
sticks containing perfumes, medicine 
bottles and watches, have been patented 
in America, England France; tele¬ 
scopes, rifles and air-guns have been 
inserted in sticks, and many other 
devices made so as to form a combina¬ 
tion of some other useful article with 
that necessity and ornament — the 
umbrella. 


SPOTS AND STAINS. 

How to Remove from Cloth. 

Taking out grease and other spots 
from clothes is an application of chem¬ 
istry which has a practical interest for 
everybody. It demands a certain ac¬ 
quaintance with solvents and re-agents, 
even though we may not understand 
the laws of chemical affinity on which 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


573 


the action depends. The general prin¬ 
ciple is the applying to the spot a 
substance which has a stronger affinity 
for the matter composing it than this 
has for cloth, and which shall render it 
soluble in some liquid so that it can be 
washed out. At the same time, it must 
be something that will not injure the 
texture of the fabric or change its color. 
The practical hints we shall give are 
condensed from a variety of foreign 
sources. 

The best substances for removing 
grease or oil are: 1. Soap. 2. Chalk, 
fullers earth, steatite, or “French 
chalk.” These should be merely dif¬ 
fused through a little water to form a 
thin paste, which is spread upon the 
spot, allowed to dry, and then brushed 
out. 3. Ox-gall and yodi of egg, 
which have the property of dissolving 
fatty bodies without affecting percep¬ 
tibly the texture or colors oi cloth. 
The ox-gall should be purified, to pre¬ 
vent its greenish tint from degrading 
the brilliancy of dyed stuffs or the 
purity of whites. Thus prepared, it is 
the most effective of all substances 
known for removing this kind of stains, 
especially from woolen cloths. It is to 
be diffused through its own bulk of 
water, applied to the spots, rubbed well 
into them with the hands till they dis¬ 
appear, after which the stuff is to be 
washed with soft water. 4. The vola¬ 
tile oil of turpentine. This will take 
out only recent stains, for which pur¬ 
pose it ought to be previously purified 
by distillation over quicklime. 

An earthy compound for removing 
grease spots is made as follows: Take 
fuller’s earth, free it from all gritty mat¬ 
ter by elutriation with water; mix with 
half a pound of the earth so prepared, 
half a pound of soda, as much soap, and 
eight yolks of eggs well beaten up with 
half a pound of purified ox-gall. The 


whole must be carefully triturated 
upon a porphry slab; the soda with the 
soap in the same manner as colors are 
ground, mixing in gradually the eggs 
and ox-gall previously beaten together. 
Incorporate next the soft earth by slow 
degrees, till a uniform thick paste be 
formed, which should be made into 
balls or cakes of a convenient size, and 
laid out to dry. A little of this deter¬ 
gent being scraped off with a knife, 
made into a paste with water and ap¬ 
plied to the stain, will remove it. 

Tar and pitch produce stains easily 
removed by successive applications of 
spirits of turpentine, coal-tar naptha 
and benzine. If they are very old and 
hard,it is well to soften them by lightly 
rubbing with a pledged of wool dipped 
in good olive oil. The softened mass 
will then easily yield to the action of 
the other solvents. Resins, varnishes 
and sealing-wax may be removed by 
warming and applying strong alcohoL 
Care must always be taken that, in 
rubbing the material to remove the 
stains, the friction shall be applied the 
way of the stuff, and not indifferently 
backwards and forwards. 

Most fruits yield juices which, owing 
to the acid they contain, permanently 
injure the tone of the dye; but the 
greater part may be removed without 
leaving a stain, if the spot be rinsed in 
cold water in which a few drops of aqua 
ammonia have been placed, before the 
spot has dried. Wine stains on white 
materials may be removed by rinsing 
with cold water, applying locally a 
weak solution of chloride of lime, and 
again rinsing in an abundance of water. 

Some fruit stains yield only to soap¬ 
ing with the hand, followed by fumi¬ 
gation with sulphurous acid; but the 
latter process is inadmissible with cer¬ 
tain colored stuffs. If delicate colors 
are injured by soapy or alkaline matters, 






574 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


tlie stains must be treated with color¬ 
less vinegar of moderate strength. 

Fresh ink and the soluble salts of 
iron produce stains which, if allowed to 
dry, and especially if afterwards the 
material has been washed, are difficult 
to extract without injury to the ground. 
When fresh, such stains yield rapidly 
to a treatment with moistened cream 
of tartar, aided by a little friction, if 
the material or color is delicate. If 
the ground be white, oxalic acid, em¬ 
ployed in the form of a concentrated 
aqueous solution, will effectually re¬ 
move fresh iron stains. Acids produce 
red or other stains on the vegetable 
colors, except indigo. If the acid has 
not been strong enough to destroy the 
material, and the stains are fresh, the 
color may generally be restored by re¬ 
peated soakings in dilute liquor ammo¬ 
nia, applied as locally as possible. 
Photographers frequently stain their 
clothes with nitrate of silver. The im¬ 
mediate and repeated application of a 
very weak solution of cyanide of potas¬ 
sium (accompanied by thorough rins¬ 
ings in clean water; will generally re¬ 
move these without injury to the colors. 
—Boston Journal of Chemistry. 


MANUFACTURE OF RUSSIAN SHEET 

IRON. 

Herbert Barry, Esq., late director of 
estates and ironworks of Vuicksa, thus 
describes the manufacture of sheet-iron 
in Russia: 

“ The refined iron is hammered under 
the tilt hammer into narrow slabs, cal¬ 
culated to produce a sheet of finished 
iron two archimes by one (fifty-six 
inches by twenty-eight inches), weigh¬ 
ing when finished from six to twelve 
pounds. These slabs are called bal- 
vanky. They are put in the re-heating 
furnaces, heated to a red heat, and 


rolled down in three operations to 
something like a sheet, the rolls being 
screwed tighter as the surface gets 
thinner. This must be subsequently 
hammered to reduce its thickness and 
to receive the glance. A number of 
these sheets having been again heated 
to a red heat, have charcoal, pounded 
to as impalpable a powder as possible, 
shaken between them through the bot¬ 
tom of a linen bag. The pile, then 
receiving covering and a bottom in 
shape of a sheet of thicker iron, is 
placed under a heavy hammer; the 
bundle, grasped with tongs by two men, 
is poked backwards and forwards by 
the gang, so that every part may be 
well hammered. So soon as the red¬ 
ness goes off they are finished, so far as 
this part of the operation goes. So far 
they have received some of the glance , 
or necessary polish; they are again 
heated, and treated differently in this 
respect, thp.t instead of having powdered 
charcoal strewed between them, each 
tvto red hot sheets have a cold finished 
sheet put between them; they are 
again hammered, and after this process 
are finished as far as thickness and 
glance goes: 

u Thrown down separately to cool, 
they are taken to the shears, placed on 
a frame of the regulation size, and 
trimmed. Each sheet is then weighed, 
and after being thus assorted in 
weights, are finally sorted into first, 
second, and thirds, according to their 
glance and freedom from flaws and 
spots. A first class .sheet must be like 
a mirror, without a spot in it. 

“ One hundred poods of balvanky 
make seventy lbs. of finished sheets; 
but this allowance for waste is far too 
large, and might easily be reduced. 
Four heats are required to finish. 

u The general weight per sheet is 
from six to twelve lbs., the larger 











THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


575 


demand being from ten to eleven fbs.; 
but they are made weighing as much 
as thirty lbs., and may then almost be 
called thin boiler plates, being used for 
stoves, etc. Besides the finished sheets, 
a quantity of what are called red sheets 
are made, which are not polished, and 
do not undergo the last operation. 

“ Taking the Michselofskoi Works, 
which are the largest sheet-iron ones 
in the Empire, I found that the powc\ 
running the sheet rolls was equivalent 
to forty horses, the rolls making seventy 
to eighty revolutions a minute. The 
hammers used are powerful, having the 
surface of the stroke very large—just 
the contrary shape there to is the ordi¬ 
nary tilt-hammer. A gang turns out 
in a shift from 450 to 500 sheets. 

“ In the central works, where they 
make sheet iron from puddled iron, 
they roll it into the necessary size, and 
then roll this hcdvanhy into half ready 
sheets with the same sort of rolls as are 
used in the North, but which however 
run much slower; the finish being 
given also by hammers in the same 
manner, but leaving out the final part 
of the operation of placing cold finished 
sheets oetween the hot unfinished ones. 
The hammers are not so heavy, and the 
heating furnaces are not so well con¬ 
structed and do not regulate the flame 
as well. The trimming, sorting, etc., 
are carried out in just the same way. 

“ The waste is really greater in the 
Central Works than it should be in the 
North, as the hammered iron does not 
leave such a raw edge as the puddled. 

u A fact that proves the superior 
manufacture of the North over the 
other parts of the empire is, that where¬ 
as in the former sheet iron is the best¬ 
paying, in the latter it is the worst 
business. . . . 

“ For the uses to which sheet iron is 
put ductibility is of the first conse¬ 


quence, and no sheet iron is of passable 
quality that will not bend four times 
without breaking; some made in the 
Oural I have bent as many as nine 
times without showing the break. 
Coupled with this quality the glance 
must be taken into consideration, as 
good polished iron will not take so 
much paint as the inferior polished.” 


HOW FISH-HOOKS ARE MADE. 

The wire for making fish-hooks is 
procured in coils from Sheffield or Bir^ 
mingham of different qualities varying 
with the kinds of goods required. All 
first-class hooks are made from the 
very best cast steel wire; other quali¬ 
ties are made of steel but inferior, 
while the common sorts of large hooks 
are made of iron. Cutting the wire 
into lengths suitable for the hook about 
to be made is the first operation and is 
performed in two ways. The small 
and medium sizes are cut from the 
bundle or coil in quantities between 
the blades of a pair of large, upright 
shears in the same manner as needle 
wires; but large sea hooks made from 
thick wire are cut singly, each length 
being placed separately upon a chisel 
fixed in a block or bench and struck 
with a hammer. What are called 
“dubbed” hooks, are “rubbed” after 
being cut—that is, placed in a couple 
of iron rings, then made red hot and 
rubbed backward and forward with an 
iron bar, until the friction has made 
every wire straight. Hooks in general 
are not rubbed but are at once taken to 
be “ bearded ” or barbed, which is thus 
performed. The bearder, sitting at a 
work-bench in a good light, takes up 
three or four wires with his left hand 
between the finger and thumb and 
places the ends upon a piece of iron 
somewhat like a very small anvil fixed 








576 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


in a bench before him. In his right 
hand he holds the long handle of a 
knife of peculiar shape, the blade of 
which, having the edges turned from 
him is placed flat upon the wires the 
knife point at the same time being 
passed under a bent piece of iron firmly 
fixed, which enables him to obtain 
sufficient leverage to cut the soft wires, 
and raise the barb or “beard,” this 
being done by pushing the handle for¬ 
ward while the point remains fixed as 
described. It becomes a laborious 
operation in the case of very large 
sizes, requiring not merely a forward 
motion of the arm but a strong push 
with the body against the handle. 
They are next taken by the filer who 
makes the points. Each barbed wire 
is taken up, separately fixed in small 
pliers held by the left hand, then placed 
upon the end of a slip of box-wood , 
and filed to the degree of sharpness 
required. This is a matter of great 
nicety and delicacy. Common hooks 
are pointed with one file, but the finer 
sorts require two or three, flat and half 
round. Large sea hooks have the ends 
flattened and the burr cut off on each 
side with a sharp chisel into a roughly- 
shaped point, previous to being filed. 
The points of “ dubbed 11 hooks are not 
filed but ground upon a revolving stone 
and this process is called “dubbing.” 
When the points are made the benders 
proceed to operate upon them. A 
woman holds in her left hand a piece 
of wood at the upper end of which is 
inserted a curve or “ bend v of steel 
projecting slightly. Taking a wire in 
her right hand she catches the beard 
upon one end of the steel curve and 
pulls the wire round into the proper 
“hook” shape. For the large sizes the 
“ bends ” are fixed, not held by the 
hand. Nothing now is necessary to 
perfect the formation but “ shanking ” 


which is done in various wajs. Hooks 
are flattened at the shank end by a 
workman who holds the curved part in 
his left hand, rests the end upon the 
edge of a steel anvil and strikes it one 
sharp blow with a hammer. Some are 
tapered at the end with a file while 
others are simply curled round or 
“ bowed ” to provide a fastening for the 
line. With steel hooks, hardening is 
the next process; but iron ones require 
converting or “ pieing ” before they 
will harden. The pie hole is a recess 
with a large open chimney and in this 
recess is placed an iron pot filled with 
alternate layers of hooks and bone 
dust. A little distance from the pot, 
bricks are built up all round and the 
space filled with coal which, when 
lighted, creates an intense heat and to 
its aatioa the hooks are exposed for 
about toil or twelve hours, allowed 
afterward to cool, and are then fit for 
hardening. To effect this, they are 
exposed to a great heat upon pans in a 
fire hole and while red hot, poured into 
a cauldron of oil. Small hooks are 
afterward tempered in a kind of frying 
pan partly filled with drift sand and 
placed over a fire. The larger ones are 
tempered in a closed oven at a low 
heat. When these operations are com¬ 
pleted they are taken to the scouring 
mill. It is occupied by a number ox 
revolving barrels driven by steam 
power and containing water and soft 
soap into which the hooks are put and 
allowed to remain for two or three 
days. At the end of that time the 
friction having worn them all bright, 
they are taken out and dried in another 
revolving barrel containing saw dust. 
Blueing, japanning, or tinning follows 
—of which the two latter are per^ 
formed in the ordinary way and the 
blueing is done by exposing them to a 
certain degree of heat in drift sand 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


577 


over a fire in the same way as small 
hooks are tempered. Counting, paper¬ 
ing, labelling and packing, complete 
the series and the goods are then ready 
for the market. 


BUSHEL WEIGHTS OF DIFFERENT 
STATES. 


ARTICLES. 


Wheat. 

Corn, Shelled... 

Corn, on ear_ 

Oats. 

Barley. 

Rye. 

Buckwheat. 

White Beane_ 

Castor Beans... 
Irish Potatoes.. 
Sweet Potatoes. 

Turnips. 

Onions. 

Top Onions. 

Peas. 

Dried Peaches . 
Dried Apples.... 

Bran. 

Malt .. 

Hemp Seed. 

Flax Seed. 

Unslacked Lime 

Coarse Salt. 

Fine Salt. 

Plastering Hair 


HISTORY OF FORKS. 


According to Professor Beckman, 
they were probably first used by the 
Italians about the end of the fifteenth 
century. They were unknown to the 
ancients, none being met with among 
the furniture of Herculaneum and 
Pompeii; and the Chinese, to this day, 
use two small sticks, like a cedar pen¬ 
cil, called chop sticks , for picking up 
the morsels of meat from the plate. 
Before the use of forks in Europe the 
fingers were often made to perform the 
service now rendered b} r them so much 
more readily, as well as decorously. 
The use of forks was, at first, consid¬ 
ered by many an unnecessarjuluxury, 
and as such they were forbidden in 
certain convents. At first they had 
only two prongs of iron, but now have 







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frequently three, and in a certain kind 
derived from the French, called spoon 
forks , they have four or five prongs, 
and these are always of silver. The 
first necessity for the use of a fork 
would probably be felt by the carver, 
and the oldest carving fork known, 
belonging to Henry IY. of France, is 
still preserved in the castle of Pau. It 
is of steel, has two prongs, and is of 
length sufficient to secure a baron of 
beef. 

The earliest distinct mention of the 
established use of forks occurs in a 
curious passage of Coryates’ u Crudi¬ 
ties, 1 ’ a singular book of travels pub¬ 
lished in 1611. The author says, “ I 
observed a custom in all these Italian 
cities and towns through which I passed 
that is not used in any other 
country that I saw in my travels. The 
Italians and also most strangers that 
are cormorant in Italy, do always, at 
their meals, use a little fork when they 
cut their meat. For while, with their 
knife, which they hold in one hand, 
the} r cut the meat out of the dish, they 
fasten their forks, which they hold in 
the other hand, upon the same dish; so 
that whosoever he be, that sitting in 
the company of any others at meals 
should unadvisedly touch the dish of 
meat with his fingers, from which all 
the table do cut, he will give occasion 
of offense unto the company, inasmuch 
as that for his error he shall be at 
least brow-beaten, if not reprehended 
in words. This form of feeding, I un¬ 
derstand, is generally used in places of 
Italy, their forks being, for the most 
part, made of iron or steel, and some 
of silver, but those are .only used by 
gentlemen. The reason of this curi¬ 
osity is, because the Italian cannot by 
any means endure to have his dish 
touched with fingers, seeing all men’s, 
fingers are not alike clean. Hereupon 




















































578 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


I myself thought good to imitate the 
Italian fashion by the forked cutting of 
meat; not only while I was in Italy, 
but also in Germany, and oftentimes 
in England since I came home; being 
once quipped for the frequent using of 
my fork by a certain gentleman, a 
familiar friend of mine, one Mr. Law¬ 
rence Whitaker, who in his merry 
humor doubted not to call me at table 
furcifer, only for using a fork at feed¬ 
ing, but for no other cause.” It would 
seem from the foregoing passage, that 
for each guest to put his fingers into 
the dish was no u curiosity ” in Eng¬ 
land 250 years ago, any more than it is 
at present in Turkey and all parts of 
the East. We read still in the accounts 
by travelers of Arabian manners, of 
the host expressing his attention to 
his guests by helping them, with his 
fingers, to choice morsels of meat, even 
from his own plate. 


HISTORY OF UNITES. 

The history of knives alone would fur¬ 
nish matter for an interesting essay. Se¬ 
lected splinters of flint, and particularly 
of Obsidian, have sharp edges; and, 
when fixed in handles, make cutting in¬ 
struments much better than might be 
supposed by those who have not seen 
them; they are,however,very far inferior 
to those of iron in point of strength and 
durability, being extremely brittle and 
incapable of being sharpened—for it is 
only the natural thin edges of the 
splinter that will serve to cut. These 
were the sole cutting instruments in 
possession of the inhabitants of the 
numerous islands in the Pacific Ocean 
previous to their discovery; and from 
the remains of spearheads, called Celts, 
made of flint, dug up in Britain, the 
aborigines, whoever they were, had not, 
in all probability, the use of iron. 


Iron, although the best material fitted 
for the purpose of making edge tools, 
and note the cheapest and most abund¬ 
ant of the metals , was not the first em¬ 
ployed. It is never found in the earth 
in its metallic state, like some other 
metals, as gold, silver and copper, and 
the art of extracting it from its ores is 
one that supposes a considerable ad¬ 
vance in civilization. Copper, hard¬ 
ened by tin, and various other kinds of 
brass and bronze, appear to have been 
the materials of which all the warlike 
weapons and instruments for domestic 
purposes among the most ancient 
Greeks were formed. In the descrip¬ 
tion of the Trojan war by Homer, no 
mention is made of iron or steel; but 
the swords, javelins and armour were 
of brass; and it has hence been doubted 
whether iron was known in Greece at 
that period. We find, however, that 
the Romans were, from the first, not 
only possessed of iron, but that they at 
an early time made knives of that 
metal for carving their meat, and 
among them the office of domestic 
carver existed in great families as in 
later times. 

Among modern nations , England 
seems to have been pre-eminent in the 
manufacture of knives, and although 
previously to the reign of Elizabeth 
many were imported, yet then London 
was the place where the best cutlery 
was made, although some other towns, 
as Sheffield, Woodstock and Salisbury, 
were its rivals. The most ancient kind 
of knives were of the sort called case 
knives , having the blade stuck in the 
handle like desk penknives, and which 
require to be kept in a sheath. Coarse 
knives of this kind, termed ivhittles } 
were manufactured at Sheffield in 1575, 
and were sold at the low price of one 
penny; and at this time and earlier, 
that town was celebrated for its cut- 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


579 


lery. At what date the simple and 
effective contrivance was invented by 
which knives are made to shut, as 
clasp knives and common penknives, 
does not appear; but they are men¬ 
tioned in 1650, as having handles of 
iron covered with horn, tortoise-shell, 
etc. 


CORK CUTTING IN SPAIN. 

The recent political revolution in 
Spain, involving the voluntary abdi¬ 
cation of the throne by the late King 
Amadeus, and the almost unanimous 
adoption by the Cortes of a Republican 
form of government, imparts a new 
interest, for Americans at least, in the 
industrial resources of that wonderful 
country. Not least among these re¬ 
sources is the production of cork. 

The cork tree is found in its wild 
state in the south of Portugal, Africa 
and Spain. In the latter country the 
preparation of the bark for foreign 
markets is one of the staple industries, 
furnishing labor and subsistence to a 
large proportion of the population. 

The tree is a peculiar kind of oak, and 
the cork is the soft cellular interior 
bark,lying just inside the exterior woody 
covering. It is removed by making 
several longitudinal clefts up and down 
the trunk, and then girdling the latter 
with horizontal incisions. This opera¬ 
tion is not performed, however, until 
the tree has attained a certain age, 
generally fifteen years, and the first 
crop is employed only for inferior pur¬ 
poses. Seven years afterwards the tree 
will have another coating of bark, 
which is stripped and used for making 
corks, and so on every five to seven 
years, according to the quality of the 
ground. The tree does not suffer from 
the process of scraping, as it generally 
lives from one to two hundred years. 


Between the cork and the tree there 
is another bark that is used for tanning; 
but this is only removed when the tree 
is cut down. It is a curious fact that 
if any portion of this inner coating be 
destroyed, further formation of the 
cork on the injured spot ceases. After 
the layers of the cork are stripped, they 
are inspected and assorted, according to 
their sizes and quality, those of the 
finest texture being of the greatest 
value. The inferior portions are gener¬ 
ally sorted out, their crust burnt off 
and sold mostly for floats, thus receiv¬ 
ing the name of fishing cork. The 
better qualities are first boiled and 
scraped, and then blackened over a coal 
fire, the object being to make the sur¬ 
face smooth, and at the same time to 
conceal flaws. Some varieties, gener¬ 
ally the best, are faced in order to 
exhibit the fineness of their texture. 

After being forwarded to the ware¬ 
houses, the largest slabs are cut into 
pieces of about three and a half feet 
in length, eighteen inches in width 
and ranging from one half inch to 
three inches in thickness. Drying and 
packing in bales weighing one hundred 
and fifty pounds each follows, and the 
cork is ready for exportation. 

From five to twenty-five cents per 
pound is the usual price paid by the 
cork cutter in this country for the 
rough material as it arrives in the bale. 
It then undergoes another assorting, 
and a thorough steaming, in a chest 
designed for the purpose, the latter 
process softening the cork and render¬ 
ing it easy to cut. To divide the sub¬ 
stance special machinery is employed. 
Rapidly revolving circular knives are 
used, which cut by a drawing motion, 
as crushing strokes simply break the 
cork or cause it to crumble. The 
workman sitting in front of the 
machine places a piece of cork of suita* 







580 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ble size in a revolving spindle by which 
it is firmly held. This spindle is raised 
a measured distance and the edges of 
the cork come in contact with the ro¬ 
tating knife, which smoothes them off 
and leaves its work in a perfectly cylin¬ 
drical form. Another method is to 
place the rough bits of cork in grooves 
on the circumference of a wheel which, 
working automatically, carries each 
piece to a point where its ends are 
received by a small lathe. The cork is 
then revolved slowly while a large cir¬ 
cular knife removes a thin shaving, 
thus giving it the necessary taper, and 
a surface as true and smooth as if sand¬ 
papered. As fast as a cork is finished 
by the automatic lathe, it is released 
and another substituted in its place. 

Every portion of the material is 
utilized, either as stuffing for cushions 
or life preservers, or as a non-conduct¬ 
ing substance for placing between walls 
or floors of buildings to deaden sound. 

It has been estimated that it would 
require 4,000 men to be continually at 
work to supply New York alone with 
corks, if all had to be made by hand. 
There are at present 60 manufactories 
in the United States, cutting and sup¬ 
plying corks to the value of $2,250,000 
per year. 


THE GUAVA. 


The guava is a tree which grows in 
tropical countries, and it is found prin¬ 
cipally in the West Indies. It is of 
the genus termed by botanists, Psidium, 
and is of two sorts, the P. pomiferum 
and P. peryferum. The plant does not 
attain any considerable size, being gen¬ 
erally about fifteen feet high; and it is 
of very delicate formation. The bark 
is quite thin, and of a light brown 
color. It peels off in small portions 


when exposed to the sun; to prevent 
this, the trees are usually planted 
beneath others of a larger growth and 
hardier nature. The leaves are of an 
elliptic, lanceolate form. They are 
very distinctly marked by the fibers of 
which they are composed. They are 
of a dark green color, and measure 
about 2i inches. The flowers resem¬ 
ble those of the orange, and emit a 
strong perfume. The fruit is about 
the size of a small lemon. It is almost 
of the same shape and color. The 
interior consists of a red, pulpy sub¬ 
stance, containing an innumerable 
quantity of small seeds somewhat 
larger than those of the fig. The rind 
of the fruit is of the consistency of 
that of an apple. Of this fruit the 
West Indians make several kinds of 
preserves, the guava jelly, stewed 
guava, quake pear, and marmalade. 
The most lucrative is the guava jelly. 
The fruit is often eaten in its raw con¬ 
dition. The negroes are so fond of it 
that they are very wary and diligent 
in guarding the trees from robbery 
when they are bearing fruit. 

The guava jelly is obtained by boil¬ 
ing the guavas with sugar and spices; 
and, after expressing the juice through 
a cloth, it is left to cool. 

The jelly is frequently bottled, but 
oftener it is put into small cylindrical 
boxes made of laminated pine board. 
A great quantity of this comfit is 
manufactured in Cuba, where it is 
termed “Jalea de guayaba,” which is 
exported to the United States and 
Europe. Notwithstanding that a good 
deal is made in the smaller islands, 
they import quite a quantity of the 
Cuban jelly. 

After the juice has been expressed 
from the guava, there remain the skins 
and the pulp containing the seeds; the 
latter is stewed and bottled, and it con- 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


581 


stitutes the stewed guava. This is 
generally partaken of with milk. 

The skins are converted into the 
delicacy termed u quake pear,” by a 
process varying slightly from the 
foregoing. 

The guava marmalade is not fre¬ 
quently made. It consists of the 
guava grated and prepared in a pecul¬ 
iar manner. 

Of the forementioned preserves, the 
marmalade is preferred by most con¬ 
noisseurs. The small seeds in the 
stewed guava are very objectionable, 
the more so if one is subject to tooth¬ 
ache, as they get into the cavities of 
decayed teeth, causing a great deal of 
suffering. 

The natives of the West Indies are 
great herbalists; they convert almost 
any plant into medicine of some kind 
or other, and they have discovered sev¬ 
eral medicinal properties in the guava 
tree. 

There is no distinction made between 
the name of the tree and that of the 
fruit in English, both being guava; 
the French term the tree, goyavier, and 
the fruit, goyave. Their respective 
terms in the Creole patois are, gyem¬ 
balm, and gyan. 


INTEREST. 


The following rules are so simple 
and so true, according to all business 
usages, that every banker, broker, 
merchant or clerk should post them up 
for reference. There being no such 
thing as a fraction in it, there is scarcely 
any liability to error or mistake. 
By no other arithmetical processes can 
the desired information be obtained by 
so few figures: 

Six per cent— Multiply any given 
number of days of interest desired by 


the principal; separate the right hand 
figure and divide by six; the result is 
the true interest, in cents, on such sum 
for such number of days at six pe* 
cent. 

Eight per cent.— Multiply any given 
amount for the number of days upon 
which it is desired to ascertain the in¬ 
terest, and divide by forty-five, and the 
result will be the interest on such sum 
for the time required, at eight per cent. 

Ten per cent. —Multiply the same 
as above and divide by thirty-six, and 
the result will be the amount of inter¬ 
est on such sum for the time required, 
at ten per cent. 


ANCIENT MODES OF EXTINGUISHING 

FIRES. 

Fire, which was anciently considered 
the most mysterious and terrible of the 
four “elements,” and for that reason 
was the invariable accompaniment of 
the process of sorcery, divination and 
magic, modern chemistry has shown to 
be no element at all, but simply the 
visible effect of rapid combustion; thus, 
indeed, it has lost its suppositious mys¬ 
tery, although its real capacity of pro¬ 
ducing terror must ever remain. There 
is hardly a scene which the mind can 
present to itself more heart-rending 
than that of a great conflagration—a 
city in flames and its inhabitants 
driven houseless and homeless into the 
bleak and icy air of winter; and this, 
too, by the very agent which they had 
used to further their comfort. Like 
all things, enough of which is good, 
but of which too much is disastrous, 
fire is a “ good servant but a bad 
master.” 

We moderns, who have the telegraph 
to let us know in a moment in what 
part of the city there is a fire, and 
steam fire engines to appear at the 










582 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


scene of conflagration with a celerity 
which, a few years ago, was unknown 
even to us, can hardly conceive the 
terror which the outburst of a fire in a 
great city of antiquity caused in the 
minds of its inhabitants; especially 
frightful must such calamity have been 
in time of war, when, to be driven from 
a beleaguered city was to be driven into 
the midst of cruel and implacable ene¬ 
mies, and it is well known that fire was 
one of the most common and destruc¬ 
tive means employed in ancient war¬ 
fare. 

Antiquity, being thus put at its wit’s 
end, devised means of extinguishing 
fires which must seem to us extremely 
ludicrous. The first hose used was 
probably the gut of an ox ; having at 
one extremity a bag filled with water, 
upon being compressed would eject the 
fluid in a stream; but such a contriv¬ 
ance would be of but little value when 
a city was on fire. At best it could 
send a stream but a short distance and 
the bag would need to be detached from 
the hose and replenished very fre¬ 
quently. The houses were not seldom 
quite lofty, and, altogether, this primi¬ 
tive hose must have been very unserv¬ 
iceable. 

Buckets and syringes were used, as 
were also pumps, and doubtless other 
machinery of which history makes but 
little mention. At Rome there were 
professional firemen trained to their 
duties from youth, and known as mat¬ 
riculant. They appear to have been a 
boisterous set of men, not altogether 
unlike those who, a few years ago, 
were led to fights and fires in New 
York by the celebrated u Mose.” The 
Emperor Trajan, writing to Pliny the 
Younger, who was Governor of Bi- 
tynia, and had asked instructions 
from headquarters in regard to raising 
a company of professional u fire lad¬ 


dies,” said that they were not the most 
peaceable citizens possible, and that 
they would not fail to form themselves 
into factious assemblies ” on the slight¬ 
est provocation. Just think for a mo¬ 
ment what must have been the result 
of the meeting of the rival companies 
of matricularii! We all know what 
good service was done by “ Mose” upon 
the devoted head of “ Syksey” when 
the speaking trumpet was the weapon 
of offense—but how ridiculous as well 
as bloody must have been the fights of 
firemen in the narrow streets of Rome, 
when buckets, syringes, long poles with 
sponges attached to them, and stones, 
were the munitions of war. A party 
running down to the “ yellow Tiber ” 
to get water for the syringes, meet 
another party just returning with 
buckets which they have filled with 
the precious fluid, intending it to 
be used by the mop-carriers. In¬ 
stantly there occurs a row, upon 
the issue of which depends the pos¬ 
session of the buckets; the moppers 
and the bucketers run from all quarters 
to mingle in the affray, and, by the 
time that forty or fifty ringleaders 
have bitten the dust, the water is all 
spilled and the casus belli removed with 
a vengeance. In the meantime the 
conflagration is spreading, and it is 
lucky for Rome if, before long, a whole 
quarter be not burned down. That 
this is not merely a fancy sketch, may 
be seen from the accounts which have 
come down to us, showing that the 
rabble of Rome was the most quarrel¬ 
some and seditious of any in the 
ancient world, with, perhaps, the single 
exception of the rabble of Alexandria. 
Also may it be seen from the fact that 
the firemen were pointed out as being 
especially fiery and riotous. 

The houses of Rome were very high, 
and almost always their upper stories 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


583 


were made of wood; this, added to the 
fact that the streets were generally 
narrow, will show how easy it must 
have been for conflagrations to spread. 
The city suffered terribly from fire 
many times, and several times was al¬ 
most entirely consumed. Every pre¬ 
caution was taken, such as compelling 
persons to build their houses a certain 
distance from each other, instituting 
bodies of public and private watch¬ 
men, and the like, and these means, 
when faithfully and dilligently used, 
were no mean preventives; but what 
was really needed was engines more 
nearly approaching to perfection, both 
in construction and handiness; and we 
find that the law at one time required 
every citizen to keep a private engine 
or sipko in his house. 

With such inefficient apparatus was 
Rome guarded from fire. 

In the dark ages conflagrations were 
common and disastrous throughout 
Europe, and the use of even the old 
engines seems to have been forgotten, 
certainly they were hardly used; and 
this fact may, among other things, be 
attributed to a superstition, by no 
means uncommon, that fires, plagues, 
and great calamities were visitations of 
Providence, and that it was impious to 
attempt to prevent them or to obtain 
mastery over them when they actually 
existed. The helplessness and igno¬ 
rance of superstitious people are per¬ 
haps nowhere more clearly seen than 
in the fact that in medieval times it 
was believed that the most efficacious 
means against fire was the ringing of 
sacred bells and the exorcism of de¬ 
mons, who were apparently supposed 
to be very inflammable personages; and 
certainly, if we consider the tempera¬ 
ture of the place whence they were sup¬ 
posed to come, the opinion would not 
seem to be altogether unfounded. 


Syringes were in use in London till 
far into the seventeenth century. They 
were of brass, and the largest of them 
held no more than a gallon. Three 
men were required to work one of 
them—two to hold the instrument and 
one to work the piston. We, at this 
age of the world, sometimes have ex¬ 
tensive fires, notwithstanding our 
improved methods of extinguishing 
them; but to see how unmanageable 
such calamities must have been two 
centuries ago—as at the great fire of 
1666, when London was destroyed—it 
is only necessary to observe that, sup¬ 
posing one of the syringes then in use 
could be filled and discharged four 
times in a minute, four gallons only 
could be applied in that time by one 
instrument. A steam fire engine can 
throw twelve hundred gallons per 
minute a distance of two hundred and 
ten feet. Even supposing—a supposi¬ 
tion manifestly absurd—that the syr¬ 
inge could throw water the same 
distance, it would require nine hundred 
men to do the work now done by one 
or two. All things being considered, 
fifty thousand syringes would not be 
as serviceable as one steam fire engine. 
As Ewbank says, “the whole act of 
using them appears rather as a farce or 
the gambols of overgrown boys at play 
than the well directed energies of men 
to subdue the raging element.” 

In the sixteenth century syringes 
were made which differed from those 
previously in use only in being larger 
and being placed on wheels. A picture 
of one of these is preserved in Besson’s 
“Theatre,” and looks,for all the world, 
like an immense sausage stuffier, capable 
of holding about a barrel of water. It 
had no hose (the ox’s gut contrivance 
had been lost during the middle ages), 
and consequently the direction of the 
stream of water could not readily bo 






584 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


changed, had the contrivance been 
placed simply on wheels. To avoid 
this difficulty, the syringe swung on 
pivots, and thus could be elevated or 
depressed, but when motion from side 
to side was required, the whole machine 
had to be turned. 

It has already been said that pumps 
were used in very ancient times; but 
these, too, were lost in the darkness of 
the Middle Ages, to appear again in 
Germany near the close of the six¬ 
teenth century. A picture of the 
pump for extinguishing fire, given by 
Decaus, shows that it was worked by 
four men, two of whom pumped, 
while one held the “squirt,” and an¬ 
other turned pailfuls of water into the 
machine. If a covered washtub be 
put on a sled, a board nailed to one 
side and rising two or three feet higher 
than it, and the whole thing considered 
a churn, the top of whose handle is 
inserted in a lever, one end of which is 
inserted in the board and the other end 
worked by hand, a very good idea of 
this pump will be obtained. The 
whole contrivance has a single forcing 
pump secured in a tub; afterwards, as 
in Hautsch’s engine—a very efficient 
one—two pumps were employed, but 
it was not till some years later, that 
the air chamber and hose came into 
use; and thenceforth, until the inven¬ 
tion of steam fire engines, variations in 
structure were simply those of detail 

in convenience of carriage and work¬ 
ing. 


THE HISTORY OF CHURCH PEWS. 

In the early days of the Anglo- 
Saxon and some of the Norman 
churches, a stone bench running 
around the interior of the church, ex¬ 
cept the east side, was the only sitting 
accommodation for its members and 


visitors. In 1319, the people are rep¬ 
resented as sitting on the ground or 
standing. A little later the people 
introduced low, three-legged stools 
promiscuously over the church. Soon 
after the Norman conquest, wooden 
seats were introduced. In 1387 a de¬ 
cree was issued in regard to the wrang¬ 
ling for seats, so common, that none 
sho.uld call any seat in church his own 
except noblemen and patrons, each 
entering and holding the one he first 
found. From 1530 to 1540 seats were 
more appropriated, a cross-bar guarded 
the entrance, bearing the initial letters 
of the owner. In 1608 galleries were 
introduced. And as early as 1614 pews 
were arranged to afford comfort by 
being baized or cushioned, while the 
sides around were so high as to hide 
the occupant—a device of the Puritans 
to avoid being seen by the officers, who 
reported those who did not stand 
when the name of Jesus was men¬ 
tioned. 


ANCIENT INKS. 

The ink used by ancient writers was 
formed of lampblack, or the black 
taken from burnt ivory, and soot from 
furnaces and baths. Some have sup¬ 
posed that the black liquor which the 
cuttle-fish yields was frequently em¬ 
ployed, One thing is certain, that 
whatever were the component ingre¬ 
dients, from the blackness and solidity 
in the most ancient manuscripts, from 
an ink-stand found at Herculaneum, in 
which the ink appears as a thick oil, 
and from chemical analysis, the ink of 
antiquity was much more opaque, as 
well as encaustic, than that which is 
used in modern times. Inks of differ¬ 
ent colors were much in vogue; red, 
purple, blue, and gold and silver inks, 
were the principal varieties. The red 










585 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


was made from vermilion, cinnabar, 
and carmine, the purple from the 
murex; one kind of which, called the 
purple encaustic, was appropriated to 
the exclusive use of the emperors. 
Golden ink was much more popular 
among the Greeks than among the 
Romans. During the middle or dark 
ages, the manufacture both of it and of 
silver ink was an extensive and lucra¬ 
tive branch of trade, and the illumi¬ 
nated manuscripts which remain are a 
■striking proof of the high degree of 
perfection to which the art was carried. 
The making of the inks themselves was 
.a distinct business; another connected 
with it, and to which it owed its origin, 
was that of inscribing the titles, capi¬ 
tals, as well as emphatic words, in col¬ 
ored and gold and silver inks. 


COLORING GRASSES. 


There are few prettier ornaments, 
and none more economical and lasting, 
than bouquets of native grasses, ming¬ 
led with the various Gnaphalium. nr 
unchangeable flowers. They have buo 
one fault; and that is the want of other 
colors besides yellow and drab, or 
brown. To vary their shade, artificial¬ 
ly, these flowers are sometimes dyed 
green. This, however, is in bad taste, 
and unnatural. The best effect is 
produced by blending red and rose 
tints, together with a very little pale 
blue, with the grasses and flowers, as 
they dry naturally. The best way of 
dying dried leaves, flowers and grasses, 
is simply to dip them into the spiritu¬ 
ous liquid solution of the various com¬ 
pounds of aniline. Some of these 
have a beautiful rose shade; others red, 
blue, orange and purple. The depth 
of color can be regulated by diluting, 
if necessary, the original dyes with 


methyl or spirit, down to the shade 
desired. When taken out of the dye 
they should be exposed to the air to 
dry off the spirit. They then require 
arranging, or settling into form, as 
when wet the petals and fine filaments 
have a tendency to cling together, 
which should not be. A pink saucer, 
as sold by most druggists, at sixpence 
each, will supply enough rose dye for 
two ordinary bouquets. The druggists 
also supply the simple dyes of aniline 
of various colors, at the same cost. 
The pink saucer yields the best rose 
dye. By washing it off with water 
and lemon juice, the aniline dyes yield 
the best violet, mauve, and purple 
colors. 


POSTAGE-STAMP COLLECTING. 

The collecting of postage-stamps is 
not always such a frivolous pastime or 
occupation as many people imagine. 

These little bits of colored paper, 
ornamented with portraits, or coats-of- 
arms, or peculiar devices, have a great 
deal of information in them. They 
tell of the rise and fall of princes; of 
the history of the republics; of the 
manners and customs of the people; 
of the peculiar characteristics of the 
country. The French and Spanish 
stamps are epitomes of the histories of 
their respective countries; the English 
colonial stamps are a geography in 
themselves; and South American 
stamps present a fine display of mottoes 
and devices; from the West Indian 
stamps we learn something of the 
peculiar characteristics of these islands; 
while in the stamps of our own country, 
in common with others issuing from 
other quarters of the globe, we have 
national portrait galleries. 

While postage-stamps are being col¬ 
lected, or when they are put into their 











586 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


albums, they are examined and studied. 
The map is consulted to find the loca¬ 
tion of the country issuing them. The 
history is opened to find whose portraits 
are figured on them. The cyclopedia 
is brought out to get some idea of their 
value. Some learned friend is ques¬ 
tioned to find the meaning of the pecu¬ 
liar inscriptions and legends. And 
little by little, this research goes on 
until the collector often finds himself, 
in a manner, getting hints of almost 
everything of interest going on in the 
world. If Russia and Turkey are quar¬ 
reling over Montenegro, he can discuss 
the cause of the troubles. He found it 
out when examining the Montenegrin 
stamps in his album. When a young 
boy is placed on the throne of Spain, 
and the collector’s attention is called to 
this country, stamps show him the 
many changes in that unfortunate 
country; and Amadeus, and Don Carlos, 
and Isabella and the proud and haughty 
nation which unveiled a new continent, 
pass before him as a panorama. The 
centennial is spoken of; our young col¬ 
lector takes out his album and sees 
Franklin with his kite, Washington at 
Yorktown, Perry on the Lakes, Jeffer¬ 
son and Louisiana, Jackson behind the 
cotton bales at New Orleans, Scott on 
the plains of Mexico, and Lincoln with 
his emancipation proclamation. 

In stamp collecting, the judgment is 
sharpened in endeavoring to detect the 
good stamps and to discard the coun¬ 
terfeit; the eye is drilled to appreciate 
the harmony and contrast of colors, in 
the proper arrangement of the stamps; 
patience is acquired and taste culti¬ 
vated in the efforts to produce fine 
effects; and cases are known of foreign 
languages being studied, simply to 
enable the collector to decipher the 
legends and inscriptions on the stamps. 
A pursuit which is productive of so 


much good should not be decried as a 
mere childish pastime. 

The introduction of the postal system 
as it at present exists in all countries 
on the globe, has been credited to Eng¬ 
land, when, in 1840, covers and envel¬ 
opes were devised to carry letters all 
over the kingdom at one penny the 
single rate. This plan was adopted 
through the exertions of Sir Rowland 
Hill, who has been aptly termed the 
“father of postage stamps.” It now 
appears, however, that there is another 
aspirant for the introduction of the 
stamp system. In Italy, as far back 
as 1818, letter sheets were prepared,, 
duly stamped in the left lower corner,, 
while letters were delivered by speci¬ 
ally appointed carriers on the prepay¬ 
ment of the money which the stamp 
represented. The early stamp repre¬ 
sented a courier on horseback, and 
was of three values. It was discon¬ 
tinued in 1836. Whether Italy or 
Great Britain first introduced postage- 
stamps, other countries afterwards 
began to avail themselves of this 
method for the prepayment of letters,, 
although they did not move very 
promptly in the matter. 

Great Britain enjoyed the monopoly 
of stamps for three years, and, though 
the first stamps were issued in 1840, 
she has made fewer changes in her 
stamps than any other country, and 
has suffered no change at all in the 
main design — the portrait of Queen 
Victoria. In other countries, notably 
in our own, the Sandwich Islands, and 
the Argentine Republic, the honor of 
portraiture on the stamps is usually 
distributed among various high public 
officers; but in Great Britain the Queen 
alone figures on her stamps, and not 
even the changes that thirty-five years 
have made in her face are shown on the 
national and colonial postage stamps. 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


587 


The next country to follow the 
example of England was Brazil. In 
1842 a series of three stamps was issued, 
consisting simply of large numerals 
denoting the value, and all printed in 
black. Then came the cantons in 
Switzerland and Finland, with envel¬ 
opes which to-day are very rare, and 
soon after them, Bavaria, Belgium, 
France, Hanover, New South Wales, 
Tuscany, Austria, British Guinea, Prus¬ 
sia, Saxony, Schleswig Holstein, Spain, 
Denmark, Italy, Oldenburg, Trinidad, 
Wurtemburg, and the United States. 
Other countries followed in the train, 
until, at the present moment, there is 
scarcely any portion of the globe, in¬ 
habited by civilized people, which has 
not postage stamps. 


THE ORIGIN AND USES OF BRASS. 

Brass, though very ancient, is not an 
original metal. It is an alloy; two 
parts copper and one part zinc. By 
changing these proportions, or by 
adding lead, tin, or antimony, the 
color and qualities are changed to suit 
different tastes or to make the shade 
more harmonious with its various sur¬ 
roundings. Brass was common in 
Egypt long anterior to the exodus of 
Israel; for, during that nation’s journey 
to Canaan, the Israelitish women con¬ 
tributed their brass mirrors, which 
they brought with them out of Egypt, 
when brass was needed to make the 
Brazen Laver. The fact that the 
Egyptians were able to burnish brass 
so highly as to give a perfect reflection 
of the “human face divine,” would 
indicate not only great skill but a large 
experience in its manufacture and use. 
Five hundred years after this period, 
Hiram, of Tyre, cast two pillars of 
brass—Jachin and Boaz—for the por¬ 
tico of Solomon’s temple. These were 


more than thirty-five feet high, and 
some five or six feet in diameter. So 
valuable was the brass, of which these 
pillars were composed, considered, even 
by the Babylonians, when the pillars 
were near 500 years old, that, after the 
destruction of the temple by Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar, his soldiers broke them up and 
carried the material to Babylon to 
increase the riches of that great city. 
Among both the ancients and the 
moderns brass has always ranked high 
among the useful and the ornamental 
metals. As early as 1750, mills and 
machinery for rolling and slitting iron 
were in operation in the United States. 
The first of which we have any record, 
were put up in Middleboro’, Hanover, 
and Milton, Massachusetts. But not 
until 1802 was such machinery called 
into requisition to roll brass, and more 
readily to make it useful. At that time 
Abel Porter & Co. started a brass button 
manufactory in Waterbury, Conn. This 
firm had their brass ingots partially 
rolled in an iron rolling mill, and then 
completed the process by means of 
small rolls, driven by horse-power, in 
their own mill. 


ENGLISH IYY. 

The use of English ivies for the pur¬ 
pose of decorating living-rooms is more 
extensive every year, and cannot be too 
highly commended. Being very strong, 
they will live through any treatment; 
study their peculiarities, and manifest 
willingness to gratify them, and they 
will grow without stint. Most houses 
are too hot for them, as indeed they are 
for their owners. Neither plants nor 
people should have the temperature 
over sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit. 
Take care not to enfeeble your ivies by 
excessive watering or undue heat, and 
you will see they will not seem to mind 









588 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


whether the sun shines on them or not, 
or in what position or direction you 
train them. Indeed, so much will they 
do themselves to make a room charm¬ 
ing, that we would rather have an un¬ 
limited number of them to draw upon 
than anything else in nature or art. 

The English ivy, growing over the 
walls of a building, instead of promot¬ 
ing dampness, as many persons would 
suppose, is said to be a remedy for it; 
and it is mentioned as a fact that in a 
room where damp had prevailed for a 
length of time, the affected parts 
inside had become dry when the ivy 
had grown up to cover the opposite 
exterior side. The close, overhanging 
pendent leaves prevent the rain or 
moisture from penetrating the wall. 
Beauty and utility in this case go hand 
in hand. 


SKELETONIZING LEAVES. 


The solution for destroying the soft 
tissues is made by first dissolving 4 oz. 
of common washing soda in a quart of 
boiling water; then add 2 oz. of slaked 
quicklime, and boil for about fifteen 
minutes. Allow this solution to cool; 
afterwards pour off all the clear liquid 
into a saucepan. When the solution is 
at the boiling point, place the leaves 
carefully in the pan, and boil the 
whole together for an hour. Boiling 
water ought to be added occasionally, 
but sufficient only to replace that lost 
by evaporation. The epidermis and 
parenchyma of some leaves will more 
readily separate than in others. A 
good test is to try the leaves after they 
have been gently simmering (boiling) 
for about an hour, and if the cellular 
matter does not easily rub off betwixt 
the finger and thumb beneath cold 
water, boil them again for a short time. 
When the fleshy matter is found to be 


sufficiently softened, rub them sapa- 
rately, but very gently, beneath cold 
water, until the perfect skeleton is 

exposed. 

The skeletons at first are a dirty 
white color; to make them pure white, 
and therefore more beautiful, all that 
is necessary is to bleach them in a weak 
solution of chloride of lime. The best 
solution is a large tablespoonful of 
chloride of lime to a quart of water; if 
a few drops of vinegar are added to the 
bleaching solution, it is all the better, 
for then the free chloride is liberated. 
Do not allow them to remain too long 
in the bleaching liquor, or they will 
become very brittle, and cannot after¬ 
wards be handled without injury. 
About fifteen minutes are sufficient to 
make them white and clean looking. 

After the specimens are bleached, dry 
them in white blotting paper, beneath 
a gentle pressure. Of course, in this, 
as in other things, a little practice is 
needed to secure perfection. , Simple 
leaves are the best for young beginners 
to experiment upon; vine, poplar, beech 
and ivy leaves, make excellent skele¬ 
tons. Care must be exercised in the 
selection of leaves, as well as the period 
of the year when the specimens are 
collected, otherwise failure will be the 
result. The best months to gather the 
specimens' are July to September. 
Never collect specimens in damp wea¬ 
ther,' and none but perfectly matured 
leaves ought to be gathered. 

A soft tooth-brush is a capital instru¬ 
ment for removing the soft tissues— 
much better than the finger and 
thumb. Indeed, it is always advisable 
not to touch the leaves during the 
process, but to float them on a piece of 
wood when the brushing process is to 
be gone through. 

Potatoes first introduced into Ire¬ 
land in 1586. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


589 


CHALK. 

It is odd to think that a bit of chalk 
has to be brought all the way from the 
cliffs of Dover before it can make marks 
on your walls; but it is wonderful to 
learn that that bit of chalk is com¬ 
posed of the elytra, or shells of myriads 
of little animals, the globierginoe , that 
lived and died in the ocean, year after 
year, age after age, for hundreds of 
thousands of years, and then, solidify¬ 
ing into compact rock, were pushed up 
five hundred feet above the surface of 
the sea. The bed of the English chan¬ 
nel is supposed to be of solid chalk, 
many hundred feet thick, extending 
over to France, and cropping up near 
Paris. Through this soft material the 
contemplated tunnel is to be bored, the 
bill authorizing the work having 
already passed through the House of 
Commons. 

There is scarcely a trade or manu¬ 
facture, workshop or school, that does 

not find a use for a bit of chalk. Great 
% 

quantities are ground up for whiting 
and putty, and, though it is an humble 
material, yet nothing can supply its 
place. There is little or none found in 
this country; all that is used here being 
imported from England, either kiln- 
dried or in blocks as it is quarried, at 
about $10 a ton. 


QUICKSILVER. 

The chief mines of mercurial ores 
are found in Spain and Austria, those 
of Spain being the most important. 
They are known as tiie mines of 
Almaden, and are situated in the prov¬ 
ince of La Munch a. The ores are 
found in a wide belt running east and 
west, extending from the town of 
Chillon to Almadenejos. According to 
Pliny, these mines were worked by the 
Greeks at least seven hundred years 


before the Christian era, for the pur¬ 
pose of obtaining cinabar, which was 
made into vermilion. They have been 
worked almost continually since that 
time; the ore in the main vein is about 
forty to fifty feet thick. The average 
yield of the ore is ten per cent., but 
much is lost by the imperfect method 
of extracting it. In former times the 
mines were worked by criminals of the 
State, but now the workmen are hired. 
The vapors from the imperfect process 
for the extraction of the metal from 
the ore, causes a variety of diseases in 
the workmen, and limits their lives to 
only a few years. These mines are the 
property of the government, and of 
late years they have been leased by the 
Rothschilds of Europe. Both Peru 
and Mexico contain mines of mercurial 
ore: the native Indians of Peru worked 
the mines before the arrival of the 
Spaniards. The chief mine is that of 
Santa Barbara, and has been worked 
since 1566. In Mexico there are de¬ 
posits of ore in several places; from 
the mines of California the yield is 
enormous—estimated to be over two 
million pounds. The chief use of mer¬ 
cury is in extracting gold in gold 
mining; it is also used as an amalgam 
with tin in silvering the backs of 
mirrors. There are various other pur¬ 
poses for which mercury is used which 
have come into demand in the varied 
industries of modern times. 


ARTIFICIAL ICE-MAKING. 

The process of making ice at the 
great manufactory at Montgomery is 
as follows: The water is distilled, put 
into rectangular tin cans, thirty inches 
long and nine and a half inches wide 
and three-fourths of an inch thick. 
These are placed in rows in tanks filled 
with salt water, coming not quite to 











590 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


their tops. Ether, which has been 
liquidized in an adjoining room under 
a pressure of from seventy to one 
hundred and ten pounds to the square 
inch, is then forced into about one 
hundred pipes in each, filling all the 
tubes as it expands into a gas. The 
ether extracts the caloric from the 
water surrounding the tube, equalizes 
the temperature, and brings the whole 
below freezing point. 

The distilled water congeals readily, 
and the salt is brought down several 
degrees colder than ice, without freez¬ 
ing. Th,e gas passes on to a receiver, 
and is again made to do service. It is 
difficult to confine it, but if allowed to 
escape, the same quantity can be used 
continually. It is said that ether is 
better than mercur} r , as the latter eats 
out copper and iron pipes quickly, while 
the former does not affect the metals. 
Three times a day the cans are taken 
out, dipped into hot water, which 
loosens the cake inside, and slabs of ice 
are produced weighing twenty-five 
pounds each. Four of these are piled 
on top of each other and allowed to 
freeze together, making one hundred 
pounds to the block. 


CHIMNEYS. 

History has failed to record the in¬ 
ventor, or to define the place where the 
chimney was first used. They seem to 
have been common at Venice before 
the middle of the fourteenth century. 
An inscription over the gate of the 
school of Santa Maria della Carita 
states that, in 1347, a great many 
chimneys were thrown down by an 
earthquake; a fact which is confirmed 
by John Villani, who refers the event 
to the evening of the 25tli of January. 
Chimneys had also been in use at 
Padua before 1368, for in that year 


Galeazo Gataro relates, that Francisco 
Carraro, Lord of Padua, came to Rome, 
and, finding no chimneys in the inn 
where he lodged he caused two chim¬ 
neys, like those long in use in Padua, 
to be constructed by the working 
people he had brought with him. Over 
these chimneys, the first ever seen in 
Rome, he affixed his arms, which were 
remaining in the time of Gataro. Fires 
were, previous to that time, kindled in 
a hole in the middle of the floor—and 
it has been a subject of much dispute 
whether the Romans had any artificial 
mode of carrying off the smoke or 
whether it was allowed to escape 
through the doors, windows and open¬ 
ings through the roof. This was 
probably of little inconvenience to 
them, as the climate and habits of the 
people led to their houses being more 
open in their construction than ours. 
It is known, besides, that the rooms in 
Roman houses were heated by hot air, 
which was brought in pipes from a 
furnace below. In Greek houses it is 
supposed that there were no chimneys, 
and that the smoke escaped through a 
hole in the roof. In England there is 
no evidence of the use of chimney 
shafts earlier than the 12th century. 
When once introduced there, its merits 
were soon appreciated. It is stated 
that in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, 
apologies were made to visitors, if they 
could not be accommodated with rooms 
provided with chimneys, and ladies 
were frequently sent out to other 
houses, where they could have the 
enjoyment of this luxury. In Roches¬ 
ter castle complete fire-places appear, 
but the flues go but a few feet up in 
the thickness of the wall, and are then 
turned out through the wall to the 
back of the fire-place, the apertures 
being small oblong holes. The earliest 
chimney shafts are circular, and of 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


591 


considerable height. Afterward they 
are found in great variety of forms. 
Previous to the 16th century, many of 
them are short, and terminated in a 
spire or pinnacle, having apertures of 
various shapes. These openings are 
sometimes in the pinnacle, and some¬ 
times under it, the smoke escaping as 
from some modern manufacturing 
chimney stacks, which are built in the 
form of an Egyptian obelisk. Clus¬ 
tered chimney stacks do not appear 
until late in the 15th century. The 
earlier^ ones consist of flues which ad¬ 
here to each other and are not separate, 
as was afterward the practice. 

Tall factory chimneys, usually made 
of brick, are very costly structures, 
many of them exceeding in height our 
loftiest cathedral spires. Their con¬ 
struction has been greatly economized 
by building them from the inside, and 
thus saving the expensive scaffolding. 
Their walls are built very thick at the 
base, and gradually thinner upwards; 
recesses are left at regular intervals in 
the inside, and stout wooden or iron 
bars rest upon these to form a tempo¬ 
rary ladder for the workmen to ascend; 
the materials are hoisted by means of 
ropes and pulleys. 

Sheet-iron chimneys are much used 
in Belgium They are cheaper than 
brick, but less durable, and are objec¬ 
tionable on account of their rapid cool¬ 
ing by the action of the external air. 

One great defect in the construction 
of chimneys, arose from the great 
capacity of the flue in proportion to 
the extent of the fire, the heat of which 
was often insufficient to determine an 
upward current for carrying off the 
smoke. Science was unable, or did not 
condescend, to investigate the subject, 
and thus the defects in chimneys con¬ 
tinued to exist through many gener¬ 
ations. 


CONSTANT ELECTRIC LAMP. 


It is well known that, under the in¬ 
fluence of a strong electric current, a 
body which is a good conductor, when 
connecting the two poles of the cur¬ 
rent. may be heated to such a point as 
to become luminous. This phenome¬ 
non is turned to account by Mr. Lody¬ 
gin, of St. Petersburg, for obtainining 
a constant light, which is both reason¬ 
able in cost and also capable of being 
used under all circumstances. Instead 
of producing the electric light by 
means of the wearing away of the elec¬ 
trodes, as has hitherto been the practice, 
that is to say by the ignition of the 
particles of charcoal which are trans¬ 
ported from one pole to the other in a 
body of air heated to a high degree 
between the electrodes, Mr. Lodygin 
employs a short stick of charcoal, in a 
single piece, and reduces the area of its 
section between the two electrodes in 
such a manner that it offers considera¬ 
ble resistance to the current; so that 
the portion between the two poles, 
being heated to a high degree, becomes 
luminous, just as a metallic wire would 
do. The lamp consists of a cylindrical 
glass vessel, closed with metal covers 
so as to be air-tight both at top and 
bottom. Occupying the center of this 
cylinder is the stick of charcoal held in 
its place by two pieces of metal commu¬ 
nicating, through the covers, with the 
two electrodes of the battery. In order 
to render the light more intense, several 
sticks of charcoal may be placed in the 
same lamp. The conducting wire 
which leads the electricity from the 
battery communicates with an insulated 
rod connected with the cover and in 
contact with the first piece of charcoal; 
the electric current then passes into 
the second piece of charcoal through 
the lower cover, and from thence to 









592 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the next lamp or to the battery. On 
account of the heating of that part of 
the charcoal which is reduced in thick¬ 
ness, the surface rapidly becomes oxi¬ 
dized when in contact with the oxygen 
of the air. and the charcoal is conse¬ 
quently worn away, a circumstance 
which would tend to considerably limit 
the duration of the lamp. To avoid 
this drawback, however, the lamp is 
filled with nitrogen, which is prevented 
from escaping by the two air-tight 
covers; in this manner oxidation can¬ 
not take place, and the pieces of char¬ 
coal preserve their original dimensions. 
The experiments have given such good 
results that the inventor has been 
awarded the Lomonossov prize by the 
St. Petersburg Academy of Science. 


SPEAKING TUBES. 

Speaking tubes first came into use in 
consequence of the singular exhibition 
about sixty-five years ago of what was 
called the Invisible Girl. In an empty 
room was seen an apparatus resembling 
a large ball having four speaking 
trumpets attached to it, the whole be¬ 
ing suspended by silken strings in the 
middle of a frame-work nearly of the 
form of that of a tent bedstead, in no 
part of which was it possible for a 
human being to be concealed. If a 
visitor applied his mouth to either of 
the trumpet-mouths and asked some 
question, a reply was given by some 
voice which seemed to proceed from 
the ball, which occasioned the name, 
the Invisible Girl. 

Although this illusion created much 
curiosity in the public, and the ap¬ 
paratus was examined for months by 
numerous ingenious persons, yet no 
one hit upon the mode in which 
the effect was produced, it not being 
then generally known that sound 


could be conveyed through tubes, and 
the tube through which the sound was- 
really conveyed being concealed. The 
following, however, was the construc¬ 
tion of the apparatus: the frame¬ 
work contained a metallic tube, and 
this tube passed under the floor into 
an adjoining apartment. The person 
who gave the answer to a question put 
at the trumpets, applied his mouth at 
the end of this tube, and the sound 
was conveyed by its means to the 
points in the frame opposite the 
trumpet mouths, which they entered 
and were reflected back, and seemed, 
therefore, to issue out of it. When 
the effect of this conveying tube be¬ 
came publicly known, the exhibition 
closed, and tubes have, since that time,, 
been very generally employed to con¬ 
vey the sound of the voice as above 
mentioned. 


HISTORY OF BREAD. 

Like most arts of primary impor¬ 
tance, the invention of bread long pre¬ 
ceded the period of its history which 
is involved in the usual obscurity of 
early times. The Greeks were accus¬ 
tomed to deify the authors of discov¬ 
eries, and they accordingly ascribed 
the introduction of agriculture to 
Ceres and the invention of bread to 
Pan; but the Chaldeans and Egyptians> 
were acquainted with these arts at a. 
still more remote period. The sacred 
writings make mention of it in the 
davs of Abraham, “ and Abraham 
hastened into the tent to Sarah and said 
make ready quickly three measures of 
fine meal, knead it and make cakes- 
upon the hearth. 11 In the paintings 
discovered in the tombs of Egypt, the 
various processes used by the ancient 
Egyptians in making bread are dis¬ 
tinctly represented. 












THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


593 


At what time and by whom the art 
of fermenting bread was discovered is 
not known, but accident is very likely 
to have given rise to it in more places 
than one. We learn from the Scrip¬ 
tures that leavened bread was known 
to the Isrealites as it was also to the 
Egyptians and inhabitants of Greece; 
but it appears that fermented bread 
was not introduced into Rome until 
550 years after its foundation, or about 
200 years before the Christian era. 
Pliny informs us that the Romans 
learned this, with many other improve¬ 
ments, during the war with Perseus, 
king of Macedon. The armies, on their 
return from Macedonia, brought Gre¬ 
cian bakers with them into Italy; and 
these were called pistores, from their 
ancient practice of bruising the grain 
in mortars. The profession of a baker 
was held in great estimation, and in 
the reign of Augustus there were 329 
public bake-houses in Rome, which 
were chiefly occupied by Greeks 
who long continued to be the only 
persons who understood the art of 
making good bread. These bakers 
were incorporated and enjoyed consid¬ 
erable privileges, and had the care of 
the public granaries. 

The art of making fermented bread 
found its way into Gaul, but it seems to 
have remained long unknown in the 
north of Europe. In the middle of the 
sixteenth century unfermented cakes 
kneaded by the women were the only 
bread known in Sweden and Norway. 
In this country, probably, the baking 
of bread was at first universally a part 
of domestic economy, and it does not 
appear at what period it became a dis¬ 
tinct profession; nevertheless it is so 
at present more or less in every country 
of Europe, and the practice is nearly 
the same in all. There is reason to 
think, from a passage in Pliny, that 


the ancients were acquainted with the 
use of yeast in fermenting bread, yet 
it was only toward the end of the 
seventeenth century that it became 
generally employed for this purpose in 
the north of Europe. About this time 
the bakers of Paris brought yeast from 
Flanders for the purpose of baking, 
and as a substitute for leaven. Al¬ 
though by this means the bread was 
manifestly improved both in appear¬ 
ance and flavor,.the French govern¬ 
ment prohibited the bakers from 
employing yeast in its manufacture, 
under a severe penalty, in consequence 
of the representations of the College 
of Physicians, in 1688, who declared it 
to be injurious to health. This order 
was, however, evaded; the yeast was 
put into sacks in Flanders, and the 
moisture being allowed to drop out, it 
was secretly brought in a dry state to 
the capital of France. The superiority 
of yeast bread in every respect soon 
became apparent; the decisions of the 
medical faculty were forgotten; the 
prohibitory laws were allowed tacticly 
to sink into oblivion, and the new 
mode of baking found its way into 
other countries. 


UNBOLTED WHEAT. 

Near the close of the last century, 
when England and France were waging 
war with each-other, the British Parlia¬ 
ment passed a law, to take effect for 
two years, that the army at home 
should be supplied with bread made 
from unbolted wheat meal, solely for 
the purpose of making the wheat go as 
far as possible. At first the soldiers 
were exceedingly displeased with this 
kind of bread, and refused to eat it, 
but after two or three weeks they pre¬ 
ferred it to fine flour bread. The result, 
of the experiment was, the health of 







594 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


the soldiers improved so much, and so 
manifestly in the course of a few 
months, that the officers and physicians 
of the army publicly declared that the 
soldiers were never before so healthy 
and robust, and the diseases of many 
kinds had almost entirely disappeared 
from the army. For a while the use of 
this bread was almost universal in pub¬ 
lic institutions, and in private families, 
and it was pronounced by civic physi¬ 
cians. by far the most healthy bread 
that could be eaten. The testimony of 
sea captains and whale men is equally 
in favor of wheaten bread. u The 
coarser the ship-bread is, the healthier 
is my crew,” said a very intelligent sea 
captain of thirty-seven years experience. 
The inhabitants of Westphalia, who 
are a hearty and robust people, capable 
of enduring the greatest fatigues, are a 
living testimony to the salutary effects 
of this sort of bread; and it is remark¬ 
able that they are very seldom attacked 
by acute fevers, and those other dis¬ 
eases which arise from bad humors. In 
fact, the laboring class throughout 
Europe, Asia, and Africa, use bread 
made out of the whole grain; happily 
for them, they cannot afford to buy 
fine flour. 

The more intelligent class of people 
in our large cities have bread made of 
unbolted wheat on their tables every 
day, and depend upon it; but in country 
places the idea prevails that it i-s cheap 
and coarse, and that to feed a guest on 
Graham bread would be inhospitable. 
Nothing can be further from the truth. 
Our first-class hotels have regularly on 
their bills of fare “ cracked wheat ” 
“hominy,” “ oat-meal mush;” and some 
advanced teachers of hygiene are be- 
ginnning to hope that the reign of fine 
flour is passing away. Of oat-meal as 
a diet one of our writers says: “Amer¬ 
icans are gradually awakening to the 


fact that oat-meal is by no means an 
unimportant article of diet. As a food, 
the merit of which has stood the test of 
centuries, and which is designed to 
promote the sanitary condition of the 
nation, by laying the foundation for 
more ready and vigorous frames for 
the coming generation, let us regard 
its adoption as an article of diet as 
nothing short of a national good. Its 
phosphorous gives a healthful impulse 
to the brain, and on no other food can 
one endure so great or so prolonged 
mental labor as on oat meal porridge.” 


BROMINE AND IODINE. 


The bromine of commerce was de¬ 
rived mostly from salines until the salt 
mines of Stassiurt where opened. The 
method of manufacture is similar to 
that followed in the separation of 
iodine. 

Upon opening the mines of Stassfurt, 
bromine was found in the mother- 
liquors in considerable quantities, and 
at present the principal part of the 
European product is derived from this 
source. As high as 300 grs. per gal¬ 
lon have been obtained from these 
mother-liquors. Although but two or 
three of the manufactories at this place 
have economized this substance, the 
price of bromine has greatly decreased 
during the last five years. This de¬ 
crease has been hastened by the large 
production of bromine in the United 
States. 

Although the amount of bromides 
in the Saratoga waters is considerable, 
yet the comparatively limited flow of 
water here, and the large consumption 
of these waters for medicinal purposes, 
precludes the manufacture. But from 
the strong salines our supply is derived 
in large quantities. At Tarentum, 
Sligo and Natrona, in Western Penn- 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


595 


sylvania, Pomeroy, Ohio and Kanawha, 
West Virginia, the manufacture of 
bromine has become of considerable 
importance. 

The total product of iodine in Great 
Britain and France is about 200,000 
-annually, and outside these two coun¬ 
tries very little is produced. As the 
average product of iodine is about ten 
pounds to the ton of kelp, and it re¬ 
quires twenty tons of wet weed to 
produce one ton of kelp, this total 
product represents the burning of 
400,000 tons of sea-weed. At the 
present price, the iodine produced is of 
more value than the alkaline salts, 
which were the original object of the 
industry. 

The chief consumption of iodine and 
bromine is for medicinal purposes in 
the form of iodides and bromides of 
potash, soda, or ammonium. A small 
proportion is consumed in photo¬ 
graphy. Bromine has been proposed 
ns a discharge in calico printing, and 
during the late war was to some extent 
employed as a disinfectant. As yet 
but a small proportion of the bromine 
of the saline mother-liquors is econo¬ 
mized; but should the manufacturers 
turn their attention to this important 
substance, the consequent reduction in 
price will render its economical em¬ 
ployment in other directions possible. 


THE ORIGIN OF ROMAN ARCHI¬ 
TECTURE. 

It is a commonly received opinion 
that the Romans derived the most of 
their art, and especially their knowl¬ 
edge of architecture, from Greece; and 
that, while by the mixture of styles 
they vitiated the purity of its taste, 
the improved knowledge manifested by 
their great works, and especially by 
their arches, bridges and cloaca ?. was 


the result of their own discoveries. 
Researches in Etruria have, however, 
established the fact that, long before 
the Romans were familiar with Grecian 
art, long even before Romulus laid the 
foundation of his city r , a people existed 
in Italy who had attained a degree of 
civilization to which in some respects 
that of Greece itself was secondary. 
Of these people no trace exists beyond 
their architectural remains; but these 
show that they were all acquainted 
with the higher principles of masonry, 
and were the true source whence the 
Romans derived their knowledge of 
architecture. Unlike the rude poly¬ 
gonal masses which form the walls of 
Mycenae and Tiryns, the walls of the 
Etruscan cities were built of rectangu¬ 
lar blocks laid in courses and skillfully 
chiseled. The cities have disappeared, 
but traces of the walls remain. It was 
from the Etruscans that the Romans 
derived their knowledge of the arch, of 
which they were, if not the inventors, 
at least the earliest people on whose 
buildings it distinctly appears. Of the 
arch the Grecians and the Egyptians 
were probably ignorant, for the vaulted 
roof of the Treasury of Athens at 
Mycenae is merely a rude dome, formed 
by converging horizontal courses of 
stone, and the arch at Thebes (the only 
genuine specimen found in Egypt, for 
that at Saccara is a simple lining of 
the rock), bears strong evidence of 
Roman workmanship. The Etruscans, 
however, preserved the arch in perfec¬ 
tion—witness the Gate of Hercules at 
Volterra and the Gates of the Theatre 
of Ferrento at Viterbo. But their use 
of the arch was not confined to gate¬ 
ways. Bridges still exist spanning the 
rivers and ravines of Etruria, on which 
the stalactites formed indicate an 
antiquity far exceeding that of Rome, 
and traces of aqueducts and vaulted 






596 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


sewers, which must have, in the first 
instance, suggested the mighty works 
of the same character at Rome. In 
the neighborhood of their ancient 
cities are found traces of paved roads 
long anterior to the Via Appia; and 
they have left still more remarkable 
evidences of their advancement in the 
tunnels (cuniculi) with which they 
penetrated the solid rock, and the con¬ 
duits ( emissarii ) with which they 
drained their overflowing lakes and 
diverted the courses of their rivers. 

It is remarkable that, from the 
remains left by these people, we are 
enabled to form some idea of their 
cities. These suggestions are found in 
their necropoleis, or cities of the dead, 
which, unlike the sepulchral monu¬ 
ments of Greece and Rome, are, as in 
Egypt, hewn from the solid rocks. 
These necropoleis, from their uniform 
plan, were evidently constructed on 
the model of their living cities. Not 
only are the rocky tombs arranged in 
regular streets, but at intervals inclose 
squares like the piazzas of a modern 
city. The interior of the tombs are 
divided into apartments, of which the 
principal bears a close resemblance to 
the atrium, or hall, which it is known 
that the Romans borrowed from the 
Etruscans. The walls are paneled in 
relief, and in places carved into arm¬ 
chairs with foot-stools, and the cham¬ 
bers are filled with articles of furniture 
of a similar character to those found in 
Pompeii. 

Thus we find in the architecture of 
a defunct nation clear evidence of a 
high civilization and refinement exist¬ 
ing in Italy long prior to the founda¬ 
tion of Rome, and from which Rome 
herself received her chief lessons in 
art. From these remains we learn that 
it was from Greece that Rome derived 
the ornamental features of her archi¬ 


tecture (in which respect, however, she 
was far from improving on her teacher) 
for the great works which render her 
famous beyond all cities, she is indebted 
to another race—a race like her own— 
purely Italian.— 


TROPICAL FRUITS. 


The Lemon grows wild in the north 
of India and has been long in cultiv¬ 
ation among the Arabs who carried its 
culture into Europe and Africa. In 
the tenth century it was transplanted 
from the gardens of Oman to Palestine 
and Egypt and the crusades paved its 
way to Italy. At the present time it 
is distributed over the whole of Asia 
and other parts of the world. There 
are over thirty varieties of lemons in 
cultivation and are generally classified 
according to the port from which they 
are shipped. The principal supplies 
received in this country are from Sicily 
and are known as Messina lemons, they 
are generally of an oval shape with a 
thick rind, smooth or rough and an 
abundant sour juice. 

The Citron or citron lemon, as it is 
called is native in Tropical Asia. The 
Jews, who at the present day use it on 
festive occasions, became aquainted 
with it during their captivity. It "was 
unknown in Greece before the time of 
Alexander the Great, Royle has met 
with the citron growing wild at the 
present day in the forests of Northern 
India. The fruit is as much as six 
inches long, ovate uneven on the sur¬ 
face and with a protuberance on the 
top. In curing the citron, it is first 
pickled to extract the bitter flavor and 
absorb the oil, then boiled and placed 
in a solution of sugar until it becomes 
saturated, when it is placed on racks to 






TIIE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


507 


dry; it is then packed in boxes for the 
market. 

The Pine-apple is a native of South 
America, and from the testimony of 
Humboldt grew wild in the forests of 
Orinoco. From this region it was 
transplanted to Asia and Africa. 
Columbus became aquainted with it 
in 1493, on the Island of Guadalope. 
The fruit called the pine-apple is not 
in reality one fruit but a collection of 
many, what are called the pips, being 
the true fruit so that the pme-apple is 
a head formed of many fruits closely 
united together. 

The Fig is a native of Asia and Bar- 
bary. It has been cultivated in Persia 
and North Africa from time immemo¬ 
rial. According to Magnos the Fig 
first led the way to civilized life. One 
Grecian tradition says Dionysius Sycetes 
was the discoverer of the fig-tree. An¬ 
other that Demeter brought the first 
fig-tree to the nurseryman Phytalos; a 
third tradition states that the fig-tree 
grew up from the thunderbolt of Jupi¬ 
ter who persecuted the Titan Syceas 
whom his mother Garca hid in her lap. 
The most celebrated fig-tree stood upon 
the sacred road from Aliens to Eleasis. 
Cortes carried it .to Mexico in 1560. It 
was first introduced in this country by 
Wm. Hamilton about 1790. Owing to 
the severe winters there is great diffi¬ 
culty encountered m its cultivation in 
the United States and the trees are 
sometimes killed as far south as 
Florida. 

The Prune is largely grown in France, 
Germany, Spain and Turkey. A large 
portion of the French prunes are made 
from the St. Julia plum and are of in¬ 
ferior quality. The most of the fine 
prunes are retained at home and a large 
quantity of those shipped to this coun¬ 
try are of a poorer quality. 

The Pomegranate is a native of 


China and the South of Europe, 
In ancient times it was cultivated in 
Palestine, Persia and Northern India. 
It grows and bears very readily in 
this country as far north as Mary¬ 
land and the Ohio river, though the 
fruit does not mature well north of 
Carolina except in sheltered places. 
Medicinally it is cooling and much 
esteemed in fevers and inflammatory* 
disorders. 


A BEAUTIFUL ORNAMENT. 

Take a goblet with the foot and 
stem broken or cut off so that the 
bowl will be perfect; take coarse flan¬ 
nel, the redder the better, stitch it 
neatly around the bowl, or goblet, so 
as to cover it completely on the out¬ 
side; dip it in water, so as to wet it 
thoroughly, then roll it in flaxseed; 
the seed will stick in and on the flan¬ 
nel; be sure that the seed is distributed 
even, then stand it on its mouth, or 
large end, in a saucer or small plate; 
put water in the small plate, or saucer, 
and renew or add to it as it absorbs. 
Never let the vessel get dry, nor suffer 
it to chill nor freeze. It can and will 
grow in any part of the room, and 
will be a deep green with a red ground. 

CALICO PRINTING. 

The art of producing a colored pat¬ 
tern or cloth by the application of 
coloring substances, appear to be of 
great antiquity. Homer notices the 
variegated linen cloths of Sidon as 
magnificent productions, and Herodo¬ 
tus says that the inhabitants of 
Caucasus adorned their garments with 
figures of animals by means of an 
infusion of the leaves of a tree, and 
that the colors thus obtained were 
durable. Pliny’s description of the art 
as practiced by the ancient Egyptians 













598 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


is almost identical with the modem 
process. He says: They take white 
cloths and apply to them not colors, 
but certain drugs which have the 
power of absorbing or drinking in 
color; and in the cloth so operated on 
there is not the smallest appearance of 
any dye or tincture. These cloths are 
then put into a cauldron of some color¬ 
ing matter scalding hot, and after 
having remained for some time are 
withdrawn, all stained and painted in 
various colors. 

This is indeed a wonderful process, 
seeing that there is in said cauldron 
only one kind of coloring material. 
Yet from it the cloth acquires this and 
that color, and the boiling liquor itself 
also changes according to the quality 
and nature of the dye-absorbing drugs, 
which were at first laid on the white 
cloth. And these colours are so firmly 
fixed as to be incapable of being re¬ 
moved by washing. If the scalding 
liquor were composed of various tinc¬ 
tures and colors, it would doubtless 
have compounded them all in one on 
the cloth; but here one liquor gives a 
variety of colors according to the drugs 
previously applied. In India the art 
of calico-printing has been practised 
for ages, and it derives its English 
name from Calicut , a town in the 
province of Malabar, where it was 
formerly carried on extensively. The 
art of calico-printing was practised in 
Asia Minor, and the Levant several 
centuries before its introduction to 
Europe. It was not till the close of 
the seventeenth century that Augsburg 
became celebrated for its printed cot¬ 
tons and linens, and that city was long 
a school for the manufacture of Alsace 
and Switzerland. The art was intro¬ 
duced into England about the year 
1676, by a Frenchman who established 
works on the banks of the Thames, 


near Richmond. More extensive ones 
were established soon after at Brownley 
Hall, in Essex. There are various 
methods of calico-printing, the simpl¬ 
est of which is block-printing by hand, 
in which the pattern, or a portion 
thereof, is engraved in relief upon the 
face of a block of holly or pear-tree 
wood, backed with deal and furnished 
with a strong handle of box-wood. In 
some cases the pattern is formed by the 
insertion into the block of narrow 
strips of flattened copper, the interstices 
being filled with felt. This gives a 
very distinct impression. The block is 
charged with color by pressing it upon 
a surface of woolen cloth stretched 
tightly over a wooden drum. The 
printing table is about six feet long, 
and is made of mahogany, or marble, or 
flagstone, or any material capable of 
forming a flat, hard surface. This 
table is covered with a blanket upon 
which the calico is spread, and the 
block being charged with color as above 
described, the person applies it to the 
cloth in the exact spot required, and 
in some cases strikes it on the back with 
a wooden mallet, in order to fully trans¬ 
fer the impression. Care is required to 
place the block in the exact spot so as 
to make one impression exactly join or 
fit in with the previous impression, 
and for this purpose the block is fur¬ 
nished with small pins at the corners, 
which make holes in the cloth and 
serve as a guide to the printer. The 
invention of cylinder or roller printing 
is the greatest achievement that has 
been made in the art. A length of 
calico equal to one mile can by this 
method be printed off with four differ¬ 
ent colors in one hour, and more 
accurately and with better effect than 
block printing by hand. The invention 
of this machine is attributed to two 
persons who had no connection with 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


599 


- i 

each other. One was a Scotchman 
named Bell, who, about the year 1785, 
brought into successful use at Mossuly, 
near Preston; the other was named 
Oberkampf, a calico-printer of Jouy, in 
France. The introduction of the cy¬ 
linder machine gradually caused the 
disuse of the flat press—the London 
printers continuing to use them long 
after the Lancashire printers had given 
them up. The first cylinder machine 
was used in London in 1812. 


KNITTED WEAR. 


The history of knitted wear abounds 
in many familiar anecdotes and stories. 
The romantic mystery surrounding the 
invention of the stocking frame by 
Lee, and the trials and struggles of that 
unfortunate inventor, are familiar to 
all; while the early labors of Strutt 
and Arkwright in England, and Moses 
Brown and others in the United States, 
had far better fruition. These latter 
men died rich, while Lee, unjustly 
despised at home, died in poverty in a 
strange land. 

The first knitting, it is said, was the 
result of enforced idleness. The brain 
and fingers of men when idle are 
scarcely ever at rest. They will twist 
and twine and intertwine; loop, plait, 
knot and knit in ways infinitely vari¬ 
ous. By this course river flags were 
formed into baskets, the bark of trees 
into ropes, and bullruslies interlaced 
and made into an art plastered with 
bitumen might safely glide down a 
stream bearing a baby prophet to a 
princess 1 arms. From these ancient 
arks, by tentative reasoning, we may 
easily trace the formation of yarn or 
fibre into garments. 

The first knitted wear in England 
was apparently that of caps. By act 
of Henry VII. in 1488, the price of 


felted hats was stated to be Is. 8d., and 
knitted woolen caps 2s. 8d. The manu¬ 
facture of these caps must have been 
carried on for some time before they 
would become important enough to be 
mentioned by an act of Parliament. 
After caps came hand-knitted hose, and 
this art is supposed to have originated 
in Scotland, where the knitted cap still 
retains its prestige as a national gar¬ 
ment. 

Lee’s stocking loom was first intro¬ 
duced into America about one hundred 
and thirty-four years after its invention, 
but it was not until after the Revolu¬ 
tion that many were imported and 
worked in this country. Hand-knitting 
during the eighteenth century was the 
great household art in the colonies and 
States. This art was fostered by pre¬ 
miums of considerable value, and the 
thrifty housewife’s principal pride was 
the number of stockings she had in 
hand for use. 

The first printed mention of the use 

of knit hosierv in America is an item of 
%/ 

an outfit to be shipped to New England 
in 1629, in which “ one hundred pairs 
of knit stockings, at 2s. 4d. a pair,” are 
included in an invoice with u sutes of 
dublett and hose, lyned with oyled-skin 
leather, ye hose and dubletts with hooks 
and eyes.” Leather here at this time 
was a common article of apparel, knit 
hose being reserved for the nobility. 
Large quantities of coarse hand-knitted 
hosiery continued to be produced in 
America during colonial times, much of 
the wool being spun as worsted, with 
double thread, and used for knitting. 
In 1662 the Virginia Assembly offered 
a premium of ten pounds of tobacco for 
every dozen pair of knitted stockings, 
and just 100 years ago, when the scheme 
of Independence was incubating, the 
Assembly of the to-be Mother of Presi¬ 
dents offered £50 for every five hun- 








600 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


dred pairs of stockings produced for 
men and women, with the privilege of 
buying them at 75 per cent, advance on 
that price. Before this, in 1698, knit¬ 
ters of coarse yarn stockings in Penn¬ 
sylvania received half a crown a pair, 
and hosiery from Germantown, the seat 
of the trade and home of the German 
Palatines in that commonwealth, be¬ 
came one of the principal features of 
the semi-annual fairs established by 
William Penn in Philadelphia, which 
exhibitions will culminate next year in 
the Centennial Exhibition. Knitted 
silk underwear was occasionally used 
before the Revolution, but it was all 
hand work. Governor Law, of Connecti¬ 
cut, is reported to have worn, in 1747, 
a coat and stockings of New England 
silk, knitted in that State, in which the 
growth and manufacture of silk first 
obtained a permanent place among our 
industries. 

The first mention of hosiery knitting 
by frame-work in America is in 1723, 
when Matthew Burne, of Chester 
county, Pa., is stated to have served 
one or two years at stocking weaving 
with John Camm, and that Camm’s 
stockings had a good repute. 

About the time that the first frame 
was erected in America, Mr. Cartwright, 
founder of the firm of Cartwright & 
Warner, which goes back for gener¬ 
ations, had a severe contest with the 
chartered company of Frame-Work 
Knitters of England. This guild was 
incorporated by an act of Charles II., 
and the officers made many oppressive 
laws, and enforced them by severe 
fines. Observing that the trade had 
declined in the City of London about 
1725, the frame owners having migrated 
to Nottingham and other districts, the 
guild sought to frighten the manufac¬ 
turers by levying a fine on those 
who removed after the Company had 


declared they should not. A Mr. Fel¬ 
lows was fined £400, and Mr. Cart¬ 
wright £150. They refused to pay, and 
their goods and frames were sold by 
the beadles of the Company. Cart¬ 
wright immediately brought an action 
for trespass against the officers of the 
Company, which was finally tried in 
1728. After a protracted legal contest 
a verdict was given to Cartwright, and 
the subdued and powerful guild’s power 
was broken in Nottingham, and for a 
long time afterward its rulings were 
restricted to the London district. Plain 
work soon came into fashion, and, as 
labor was cheaper in the country, Not¬ 
tingham and Leicester soon obtained 
the trade of the London merchants, 
Cartwright, by his energy, having paved 
the way for the country manufacturers 
to triumph over those of the city. 

In 1747 a stocking manufactory at 
Annapolis, Md., was considered a great 
curiosity, but it was not a success. In 
1776 the Committee of Safety of that 
State appropriated £300, to enable M. 
Coxenfender to establish a stocking 
frame in Frederick county. 

In 1764 the Society of Arts in New 
York offered £10 premium for the first 
three stocking looms of iron set up 
during the year, £5 for the next three, 
and £15 for the first loom manufac¬ 
tured in the Province. 

In 1777 it is reported that one hun¬ 
dred stocking weavers and their looms 
were idle at Lancaster, Pa., and in 1786, 
only three weavers were in that town. 

James Wallace, a foreigner, and Ben¬ 
jamin Hanks, a native, asked the 
Assembly of Connecticut in 1777 for a 
loan or premium for manufacturing 
cotton, silk, worsted and thread hosiery, 
and were refused. 

Looms were put up about 1798 in 
Rhode Island, and Moses Brown, ol 
Providence, bought a frame set up at 





THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


601 


East Greenwich, in that State, by John 
Fullem, an Irish stocking weaver. 

In March, 1794, Michael Troppal, of 
Newark, N. J., petitioned Congress for 
more duty on hosiery, but a duty of 5 
per cent, was all that was deemed 
proper to impose at that date. In 1816 
it was laid at 20 per cent, ad valorem , 
on wool and cotton; in 1828 to 35 per 
cent, on kit woolen goods; in 1832 
reduced to 25 per cent.; in 1842 cotton 
and woolen hosiery duties were fixed 
at 30 per cent.; in 1846 reduced to 20 
per cent, on cotton; in 1857 duty on 
both laid at 24 per cent.; in 1862 raised 
on both kinds to 35 per cent, ad va¬ 
lorem. From that year the mutations 
of the tariff were frequent, until now 
the duty is so high that very few 
garments of knit woolen underwear are 
imported unless over 80 per cent, per 
lb. value. 

In England the production of stock¬ 
ing frames for special purposes in¬ 
creased in variety greatly until 1800, 
when, owing to changes of fortune, 
fancy hoisery commenced to decline, 
and continued to do so for forty years. 

Previous to this date, Jedediah 
Strutt, a farmer in Derby, adapted the 
stocking frame to the manufacture of 
ribbed goods, similar to that knit by 
hand, and which is so necessary to a 
neat and close fit in underwear. It was 
with Strutt that Samuel Slater ac¬ 
quired a knowledge of the cotton 
business, which he afterward intro¬ 
duced into the United States. Slater 
had been a clerk, and afterward overseer, 
in Strutt & Arkwright’s mill, the latter 
having woven cotton yarn, which was 
found to be well adapted for machine 
knitting, and afterward forming the 
partnership with Strutt. 

New York City had in 1820 a few 
looms weaving stockings, pantaloons 
and drawers. 


In 1832, the first power loom for 
weaving stockings or stockinet was 
invented and put in operation at Co¬ 
hoes. It was invented by Timothy 
Bailey of Albany, at the suggestion of 
Egbert Egberts. This machine was 
simply the stocking frame of Lee 
adapted to power. It produced a web 
28 inches wide at the rate of an inch a 
minute; this was afterward cut and 
seamed into garments. By the hand 
loom it was a day’s work to knit two 
pairs of drawers, while a girl by the 
power loom could knit twenty in the 
same time. In 1834, Joseph Whitworth, 
the celebrated mechanician, introduced 
in Manchester, Eng., an American 
knitting machine, which was, I believe, 
the machine invented by Bailey. In 
this machine the process of narrowing 
had to be conducted by hand. These 
machines cost much more than the 
ordinary frames, and they did not come 
into general use in England. 

Among the noted inventors of knit¬ 
ting machinery was Brunei, the en¬ 
gineer of the Thames tunnel. He 
resided in New York a long time, and 
constructed an arsenal and cannon 
foundry here. Some years after his 
return to England he patented a round 
hosiery frame. 

To Mr. M. Townsend, first a frame¬ 
work knitter, then a hosier in Leicester, 
the invention of round hose, with heels 
and toes fashioned on other machines, 
is due. Mr. Townsend did not succeed 
very well in England, all hough in the 
front rank of skillful manufacturers of 
hosiery, and finally came to America, 
where his undoubted skill met its due 
pecuniary reward. 

It is impossible within the limits of a 
newspaper article to sketch the import¬ 
ant improvements in the trade of the 
past forty years. They have been so 
numerous, and such great results have 





602 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


been obtained, that a large-sized book 
will scarcely contain them. Bennett 
Woodcroft, in his introduction to the 
Abridgement of British Specifications 
of English Knitting-machine Patents, 
gives much useful information regard¬ 
ing the knitting mechanism of Eng¬ 
land. Our inventors have not been 
behind-hand, and France, with its 
seamless hosiery looms, Aiken of 
Franklin, N. H., with the latch-needle 
machine for use in families, or for 
power; Wilson of New York, for his 
improved circular machine, and many 
others, have successfully supplemented 
the earlier work of the Strutts, father 
and sons, Arkwright, and others. 

The changes of fashion have at times 
totally changed knitting machinery. 
Among the styles of hosiery in fashion 
for the past seventy-five years may be 
mentioned open-worked insteps, cotton 
hose ornamented with glazed linen 
thread, silk twilled hose, silk and cotton 
non-elastic platted twilled and platted 
plain hose, warp-vandyked hose, sha- 
moy-shaped hand and tickler-made 
cotton, tuck ribbed, worsted imperial 
hose, silk stockings, shamoy-shaped 
embroidered silk hose, and silk-nar¬ 
rowed clocks, a fashion now revived. 
The art of “ chevening ” hose (em¬ 
broidering with a needle) is an old one. 
It had long been done in France and 
Spain before it was commenced in 
England. In the year 1783, Mrs. 
Elizabeth Drake commenced it in 
Nottingham, and it soon came into 
great repute. 


PERCENTAGE OF PROFIT. 

To find the percentage of profit 
substract the cost from the selling- 
price, add two ciphers to the remainder 
and divide by the cost; the answer will 
be the percentage of profit. Example; 


If a pound of raisins cost 15 cents, and 
you sell them for 20 cents, what will be 
the percentage of profit? Substract 
15 from 20 and you have 5 as a re¬ 
mainder. Now add two ciphers and 
you have.500; divide this by 15, the 
cost of the raisins, and the result will 
be 33^, the exact percentage of profit. 
To find the percentage of loss on any 
sale you simply reverse the terms. 


HOW BROADCLOTH IS MADE. 


In the British Trade Journal is the 
following comprehensive summary of 
the various processes by which wool is 
made into broadcloth; 

“ The better to manifest what woolen 
is not, let us see what cloth is. Stage 
by stage, from sheep’s back to gentle¬ 
man’s back, we will trace its history. 
The wool being shorn, goes to the 
staplers, and by him is sorted. It is 
neither long nor short, and, for the 
cloth manufacture, if wool be not 
moderately short, it must be shortened 
artificially. It is next well oiled and 
spun into thread or yarn, then woven 
into a tissue that will be cloth by-and- 
by, though a long way distant from 
cloth when it leaves the weaver. The 
tissue, if examined at this stage of 
manufacture, would display its threads 
just like madam’s stuff' gown does. A 
coat of this material would be thread¬ 
bare all over, despite its newness. Be¬ 
fore this material can become commer¬ 
cial cloth, five chief things will have 
to be done to it. Its texture must be 
closed;-it must be shrunk—that is to 
say, it must be cleansed; a nap must 
be put upon it; superfluous nap must 
be shorn off; finally, it must be hot- 
pressed. First, as to the closing or 
shrinking. If we bear in mind what 
has already been stated about the qual- 









603 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


ity of lelting possessed by wool, due to 
the presence of certain saw-like teeth, 
the reason of shrinkage will be under¬ 
stood. To accomplish this is the ful¬ 
ler’s task, and he goes to work as 
follows: He takes the material to be 
shrunk, wets it, soaps it, and submits 
it to the fulling-mill for a considerable 
time — seven or eight hours — under 
which operation the shrinkage is 
effected. The fulling machine is an 
engine so contrived that certain heavy 
piles or hammers are brought to bear 
upon the texture, already soaped, 
wetted, and laid in a trough. The 
hammers are so fixed in the machine 
that not only do they fall upon the 
texture with heavy thuds, but at the 
same time turn it about, each stroke 
being delivered on a fresh portion. 
Now, bearing in mind the saw-like 
teeth, and the quality of felting, what 
happens will easily be understood. The 
wool fibers are well soaped, as we 
already know, and but for their serra¬ 
tion all looking one way, they would 
slide upon each other in various and 
irregular directions. Practically, how¬ 
ever, they can only slide one way— 
namely, with the roots foremost. The 
result is that the saw-like teeth catch 
among each other, at every catch 
making the wool-fibers shorter, where¬ 
by the entire texture is shrunk, and, of 
course, proportionately closed up and 
thickened. This result being accom¬ 
plished, the workman clears away the 
soap by means of fuller’s earth and 
water, the fabric remaining still in the 
trough, and still wrought upon by the 
fulling hammers or piles. Being taken 
from the fuller’s mill, the shrunken 
material has next to be dried. This is 
done by hanging it on tenter hook 
stuck into the margins of the texture 
at convenient distances. Obviously, 
this is an operation that would admit 


of considerable deceit in dishonest 
hands. The wet fabric might be injur¬ 
iously stretched — made broader and 
longer to the prejudice .of material. 
Formerly the exact amount of stretch¬ 
ing to be used was regulated by Act of 
Parliament, so important did the mat¬ 
ter seem. Our material, woven, fulled 
and dried, is not cloth yet, though a 
considerable way advanced on its road 
to cloth. It has no nap, so the next 
process will be in imparting a nap to 
it. Let us suppose, now, by way of 
introducing the nap-imparting process, 
that a piece of our material having 
been laid flat on a board, a cat gets on 
it and scratches it. Puss would get a 
sort of nap on our material, though 
she would deal with it somewhat 
roughly. If the scratching effect of 
cats’ claws were such as the cloth worker 
required, he might imitate the opera¬ 
tion by some sort of wire-tooth ma¬ 
chinery. Altogether too violent it 
would be; for, although nap is really 
scratched up out of the threads, this 
is effected by little hooks incomparably 
finer than the claws of any cat—finer 
than any hooks man’s ingenuity has 
enabled him to devise, the agent used 
by clothiers of to-day, as by the Ro¬ 
mans, being the hook-like growths of 
the Dipsacus fullonum , or fuller’s 
teasel. This plant, in growth, is some¬ 
thing like a thistle, though, botanically 
it differs from a thistle. It bears round 
heads, each about the size of a small 
apple, and studded all over with fine 
hooked protuberances. Many of these 
teasel-heads, being packed together and 
bound up tight on a flat surface, make 
a sort of comb, or curry-comb, and this 
was the invariable way of packing tea¬ 
sels for use in cloth manufacture once. 
They may be also packed on a cylinder, 
but however arranged, their use in get- 
ing up nap out of threads will be 





604 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 




obvious. Caused to rub against the 
incipient cloth, they scratch out little 
odds and ends of wool, and produce a 
hairy surface. One stage further, then, 
our woven material has advanced on 
the road to perfect cloth, but it is not 
cloth yet. The nap just scratched up 
by the teasel hooks is of all lengths, 

within certain limits. The manufac- 

» . 

turer wants an even length, which he 
accomplishes by shearing. Next fol¬ 
lows hot-pressing, which being done, 
we regard the cloth as made. 


RULES FOR SPELLING. 


The following rules should be care¬ 
fully committed to memory, as the 
knowledge of them will prevent that 
hesitation about the spelling of com¬ 
mon words which is frequently expe¬ 
rienced: 

All monosyllables ending in 1, with a 
single vowel before it, have double 1 at 
the close; mill, sell. 

All monosyllablesending in 1, with a 
double vowel before it, have one 1 at 
the close; wail, sail. 

Monosyllables ending in 1, when 
compounded, retain but one 1 each; as 
fiillfil, skillful. 

All words of more than one syllable 
ending in 1 have only one 1 at the close, 
as faithful, delightful; except recall, 
befall, unwell. 

All derivations from words ending in 
1 have one 1 only; as equality from 
equal; except they end in er, or 11, as 
mill, miller; full, fuller. 

All participles in ing from verbs end¬ 
ing in e, lose the final; as have, having; 
amuse, amusing; except they come 
from verbs ending in double e, and 
then they retain both; as see, seeing; 
agree, agreeing. 

All verbs in ry, and nouns in ment, 


retain the final of their primitives; 
as brave, bravery; refine, refinement; 
except judgment and acknowledgment. 

All derivations from words ending in 
er, retain the e before the r; as refer, 
reference; except hindrance from 
hinder; remembrance from remember; 
disastrous from disaster; monstrous 
from monster; wondrous from wonder; 
cumbrous from cumber, etc. 

All compound words, if both end not 
in 1, retain their primitive parts entire; 
as millstones, chargeable; except al¬ 
ways, deplorable, although, almost, ad¬ 
mirable, etc. 

All monosyllables ending in a con¬ 
sonant, with a single consonant before 
it, double that consonant in derivatives; 
as sin, sinner; ship, shipper; big, 
bigger. 

Monosyllables ending in a consonant, 
with a double vowel before it, do not 
double the consonant in derivatives, as 
sleep, sleeper; troop, trooper. 

All words of more than one syllable, 
ending in a single consonant, preceded 
by a single vowel, and accented on the 
last syllable, double that consonant in 
derivatives, as commit, committee; 
compel, compelling, appal, appalling. 

Nouns of one syllable ending in y, 
change y into ies in the plural, and 
verbs ending in y, preceded by a con¬ 
sonant, change y into ies in the third 
person singular of the present tense, 
and ies in the past tense and participle; 
as fly, flies; I apply, he applies; if the 
y be preceded by a vowel, this rule is 
not applicable; as key, keys; play, 
plays. 

Compound words, whose primitives 
end in y, change y into i; as beauty, 
beautiful; lovely, loveliness. 

The degree of doctor first conferred 
in Europe, at Bologna, in 1130 ; in 
England, 1208. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


605 


HISTORY OF SCHOOLS. 

The institution of schools is very an¬ 
cient. They were first instituted for 
educating the higher classes of society. 
With the exception of what instruction 
their parents could impart the great 
mass of the people were left to igno¬ 
rance. As early as 500 B. C. private 
schools for instructing in reading, writ¬ 
ing and arithmetic were established in 
Greece. At this time the people re¬ 
mained in ignorance. The Romans 
also had schools for boys in the cities 
300 B. C. Public schools were first 
made a feature in Greece but these 
schools of Sparta were intended more 
for physical than intellectual develop¬ 
ment. After the fifth century under 
the episcopal or cathedral schools were 
taught besides theology the seven lib¬ 
eral arts, viz.: arithmetic, geometry, 
astronomy and music. 

In 780 Charlemage labored with zeal 
in that age of ignorance for the instruc¬ 
tion of the people under his sway. He 
decided that not every convent but 
every parish was to have its school the 
former for the instruction of public 
officers and the latter for the lower 
classes of people. About the 13th cen¬ 
tury schools were established in which 
reading and writing were taught by 
itinerant monks and students who were 
employed as teachers. 

In the 15tli century Luther says Ger¬ 
many was overrun with persons who 
had received appointments as teachers 
because they were generally the only 
persons who could be hired as school¬ 
masters though many had hardly seen 
a university. Luther’s ideas were far 
in advance of any previously held and 
were identical with those now common 
in this country and in Germany. He 
advocated the maintaining of schools 
by the civil government rather than 


the church. Through his influence 
was established a free school system in 
Saxony as early as 1527 which was the 
first of the system now so popu'ar. At 
the present time the methods are dif¬ 
ferent for administering the national 
elementary education. The system in 
Prussia is governmental and under 
pains and penalties every child in the 
kingdom from the age of 7 to 11 is 
obliged to attend. The primary schools 
of France are conducted in the same 
manner. A teacher however can open 
a private school under certain condi¬ 
tions. In England the education of 
the people is under the care of the 
Established Church. In the United 
States the system is entirely different. 
The State Government ordains that 
schools of a certain character must ex¬ 
ist among a given population. The 
people in their capacity of free citizens 
determine all questions concerning the 
buildings, teachers, and methods of in¬ 
struction. 


HAVANA CIGARS. 


The original name for a cigar was 
tabacOi and the original inventors of 
modern cigars were the red Aborigines 
of Cuba. The native appellation for 
the plant out of which cigars are made 
was cohiba. The suspicion that such 
is the case must have sprung up in the 
minds of all intelligent persons who, 
on examining a box of Havana cigars- 
discovered on the outside of it the fact 
that the cigars were made in a fabrica 
de tabacos which—as everybody knows 
or does not know—means a manufac¬ 
tory of cigars, and, of course, not a 
manufactory of tobacco. 

The finest cigars that can be had are 
the Vigueras, which are made of the 
finest leaves, right on the spot in the 











GOG 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


vegas , and which, are rather expensive, 
and even for any amount of money 
somewhat difficult to procure. The 
ordinary price for a Vigueras Regalia 
Imperial—a seven-inch cigar — ranges 
between $200 and $300 per thousand— 
not in New York, but in Cuba. 

Many smokers, and even cigar deal¬ 
ers, in New England are somewhat 
confused in regard to the proper inter¬ 
pretation of some of the names they 
see branded into the cedar boxes. Peo¬ 
ple often feel quite confident that they 
buy or sell a particular quality of 
tobacco in the cigars when they give 
them the name of Regalia Imperial, 
Regalia, Londres, Dama, Entr’operas, 
or any other of this class. The fact, 
however, is that these names designate 
only the sizes of the cigars. A Regalia 
Imperial measures seven inches, a Rega¬ 
lia Britannica is a little smaller, a Lon¬ 
dres is of the medium size, the Damas 
or Entr’operas are quite thin and small, 
fit to be smoked in the pauses between 
the acts, at the door-steps, or in the 
smoking-room of a theater. 

The quality of the tobacco is indi¬ 
cated by the words superfine >, fino , supe¬ 
rior, bueno. The color and strength 
of cigars is stamped on the box with 
maduro for the strongest, oscuro for 
the next in strength, Colorado for those 
of medium strength, and claro for the 
light ones. The intermediate shades 
of the cigars are indicated by combining 
two of these terms: thus, Colorado ma¬ 
duro signifies that the cigar is a little 
darker, and Colorado claro that it is a 
little lighter than a Colorado should be. 

There are two words which must find 
a place m the tobacconist’s glossary— 
namely, the words which stare at you 
in every street of every town in the 
world of more than 500 inhabitants— 
Vegas and Vuelta Abajo. 

The mystery of the word vegas is 


nothing, but the fact that it is the 
Cuban name for a tobacco plantation, 
and Vuelta Abajo is the district in which 
most of the plantations are found. 
Vuelta Abajo is a low region of Western 
Cuba, south of the Guaniguanico Moun¬ 
tains, which run from Marielbai to the 
Bay of Guadiana. The best vegas lie 
on the bank of the River Gayaquataje, 
on a piece of land about thirty miles 
long by seven deep. As a rule, a 
tobacco plantation contains only one 
caballeria , which is equal to about 
thirty-three acres. Half of it is stocked 
with various plants to shelter the to¬ 
bacco, and, nevertheless, a cabailer id 
produces as much as 9,000 pounds, 
averaging about $100 per 100 pounds. 

As the tobacco crop is to the Cubans 
a matter of not less than $20,000,000 
a year, all the people are willing to 
pray for a rich harvest. When the 
insects peculiar to the tobacco plant 
seem to be a little thick, at once regu¬ 
lar days of prayer are appointed, and 
the holy Martin, the saint of tobacco¬ 
nists, has 10,000 masses said in his 
honor, to make him bless the crop and 
pick off the insects. 


CIGARETTES. 

How Tliey Are Manufactured. 

The tobacco used in the Havana 
factory comes chiefly from the small 
plantations in the western part of Cuba. 
When brought in, the first process is 
to place it on a sieve-table, set in mo¬ 
tion by machinery. This sifts away all 
the sand and other foreign bodies from 
the leaf, twelve skillful workmen stand¬ 
ing on either side of the table to snatch 
away all bad leaves or stems from the 
mass, as it travels along by the pressure 
of the mechanism. It is next thrown 
upon a huge ventilator, which winnows 
off the dust, and after that it is spread 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


607 


in thin layers on outside terraces, where 
the tropical sun can have full play upon 
it and dry it thoroughly. It is then 
taken inside and dropped into huge 
casks, where it is subjected to intense 
hydraulic pressure, after which it is 
conveyed by an almost imperceptible 
motion, effected by means of a series of 
screws, beneath a huge fly-wheel, set 
with sharp blades, that chop it to pieces. 
Then it is again ventilated, winnowed 
and subjected to the action of finer 
cutting apparatus, until it is reduced 
to the desired tenuity, after which it is 
spread out on the lower floor of the 
building and besprinkled with an aro¬ 
matic liquid, the composition of which 
is a secret of the manufacture. China¬ 
men alone are employed at this last 
stage, because their ignorance is re¬ 
garded as a guarantee that the secret 
will not be betrayed. The tobacco, 
being once more partially dried, now 
requires only its paper envelopes. For 
these the material comes from Spain, 
and the Havanese cigarettes-maker im¬ 
ports thirty-five thousand bales of it 
per annum. The paper is passed be¬ 
neath a press, which stamps it indelibly, 
and is then submitted to a mechanical 
knife, which cuts off hundreds of wrap¬ 
pers at a stroke. The final process 
consists of the folding and packing, 
and these are entrusted to hundreds of 
hands, some permanently employed, 
some working in their own rooms out¬ 
side, some inmates of charitable insti¬ 
tutions, and even of prisons. In one 
saloon a visitor saw three hundred 
convicts, black and white, hard at work 
rolling the cigarettes delicately between 
their fingers. Every workman gets a 
certain quantity of tobacco and wrap¬ 
pers, and must deliver a round of five 
thousand cigarettes from it, with per¬ 
haps fifty over, which he is allowed to 
keep for his own use. For this amount 


of work he gets from the overseer a 
metal check entitling him to the pay¬ 
ment of one dollar, at sight, on 
presentation to the cashier or foreman. 
Everything, of course ; is strictly con¬ 
trolled and checked, with all the aid of 
scientific arrangement and apparatus. 


HOW TO TREAT TENDER PLANTS 
THAT HAVE BECOME FROZEN. 

The disastrous effects which tender 
plants, that have become frozen, are sub¬ 
ject to,is generally known to cultivators; 
but how or why freezing produces the 
effect it does upon plant life, is not so 
easily ascertained, and all attempts here¬ 
tofore made by scientific men to solve 
the question, have been, at most, only 
partially successful. In practical expe¬ 
rience it is found, that the length of 
time, and the degree of cold to which 
plants are exposed, affect them in pro¬ 
portion to the duration and intensity 
of these conditions, which points, there¬ 
fore, to the speedy restoration of a 
suitable temperature, as the best means 
of restoring plants that have been un¬ 
fortunately exposed to frosts. But the 
thawing out, should, in all cases, be 
moderately gradual, and one of the 
best things to do when plants have 
become frozen, either in the dwelling, 
conservatory, or in the open air, is to 
sprinkle the foliage with cold cistern 
or well water, as the temperature turns 
to rise. In the dwelling or conserva¬ 
tory, however, it will be necessary to 
start the fire in the stove, furnace or 
flue the first thing of all, to give the 
temperature an ascendency, but it 
should for several hours, not be allowed 
to rise above an ordinary suitable 
degree. Some advocate shading the 
plants from the sun and light for some 
length of time, but the policy of so 
doing has never been apparent while 









608 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


some have frequently had strong 
proofs to the contrary; that the sun’s 
rays striking upon the plants with 
gradually increasing heat, in a great 
measure, aids their recovery. There is 
a great difference in plants, as regards 
their ability to resist cold, and while 
some the slightest frost will injure 
beyond cure, others will bear various 
degrees, and even alternate freezing 
and thawing again and again, with im- » 
punity. Avoid handling plants in a 
frozen condition as much as possible, 
as the injury to them will be heightened 
should the leaves become bent or be 
roughly brushed over. To restore 
flowers that have become frozen, place 
them in cold water until they have 
thawed out. 


FIRE-PLACES. 

The modern form of heating our 
houses at the present time, and the 
convenience of everything connected 
with cookery, presents a striking con¬ 
trast to the old-fashioned fire-place, 
which was used by our ancestors. 
Many of them were built large enough 
to burn wood four or five feet in length. 
The wood was burned upon irons called 
dogs, laid upon the hearth; many of 
them were made of brass and some very 
elaborate in design. The throat of the 
chimney being large, the consumption 
of fuel was immense. To support ket¬ 
tles over the fire in boiling, a crane 
was placed movable upon a center to 
which the vessels were suspended by 
iron hooks, that were made to lengthen 
and shorten to keep them near or far¬ 
ther from the fire. Many will remem¬ 
ber the old iron bake-kettle which was 
used to bake corn-bread and short-cake 
and the iron cover with the rim turned 
up well filled with burning coals. 
Another very useful article was the 


tin kitchen with which a roast of beef 
or turkey on the spit would be done to 
a turn. In many of the kitchens or 
living-room would be old-fashioned 
seats called settles with high, close 
backs to defend those who sat in them 
from any cold draughts of air; the seats 
forming a chest for containing house¬ 
hold articles. In many of the modern 
houses of the present day are fire-places 
with grates for burning wood or coal. 
They are constructed upon the most 
approved method on a much smaller 
scale, beautiful in design and ornamen¬ 
tation, contrasting greatly with the 
old time fire-place. 


INSURANCE. 

Insurance does not appear to have 
been known to the Romans, however 
near they may have come to the inven¬ 
tion of it. Beckmann says, if we ex¬ 
amine closely the information from 
which some endeavor to prove to the 
contrary, it will be found that it is far 
from sufficient to support their opin¬ 
ion. Puffendorf, Barbeyrac, Loccenius, 
Kulpis and others ground their asser¬ 
tions on a passage of Livy, who says that 
when the Roman army in Spain was 
distressed for provisions, clothing and 
other necessaries, a company engaged 
to copvey to them every thing they 
stood in need of, under the stipulation 
that the State should make good their 
loss in case their vessels should be 
shipwrecked by storms or be taken by 
the enemy, and we are told that these 
terms were agreed to. This was, un¬ 
doubtedly, a promise of indemnifica¬ 
tion, but by no means an insurance, in 
which it is always necessary that a 
premium should be given. On occa¬ 
sions of this kind, however, acts of 
fraud were practiced like those com¬ 
mitted at present to the prejudice of 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


609 


ilie insurers. Shipwrecks were pre¬ 
tended to have happened which never 
took place, and old and shattered ves¬ 
sels freighted with articles of little 
value w^ere purposely sunk and the 
crew saved in boats, and large sums 
were then demanded as a reimburse¬ 
ment for the loss. Those writers who 
have pretended that insurance is men¬ 
tioned in the Catalonian maritime 
laws have, perhaps, been led into error, 
because in an appendix to some of the 
common editions, there is a short ac¬ 
count of insurance as once practiced at 
Barcelona. 

The oldest laws and regulations con¬ 
cerning insurance with which the 
author was acquainted, are the follow¬ 
ing: On the 28th of January, 1523, 
five persons appointed for that pur¬ 
pose, drew up, at Florence, some 
articles which were employed for a 
long time on the exchange at Leghorn. 
These important regulations, together 
with the prescribed form of policies 
which may be considered as the oldest, 
have been inserted in Italian and Ger¬ 
man by Mugens in his Treatise on 
Insurance, Average and Bottomry 
published at Hamburgh in 1753. In 
the memoirs of Capmany is “ An 
ordinance of the year 1458 respecting 
insurance, which required that under¬ 
writing should be done in the presence 
of a notary, and declared policies v. 
scriptores privacies to be null and void. 
Straccha mentions a Florentine order 
of June the 15th, 1526, which forbids 
common insurance unless the goods 
and commodities are specified. There 
is still preserved a short regulation of 
the 25th of May, 1537, by the emperor, 
Charles V., respecting bills of ex¬ 
change and insurance, in which the 
strictly fulfilling only of an agreement 
of insurance is commanded. In 1549, 
the same emperor issued an express 


order in which occurs some article re¬ 
specting insurance, and additions were 
afterwards made to it in 1561. In the 
year 1556, Philip II., King of Spain, 
gave to the Spanish merchants certain 
regulations respecting insurance which 
are inserted by Magens with a German 
translation in his work before men¬ 
tioned. They contain some forms of 
policies on ships going to the Indies. 
On the last of October, 1563, Philip 
II. published his maritime laws in 
which some forms of policies are given; 
but on the last of March, 1568, that 
prince forbade the practice of insur¬ 
ance on account of the bad use to 
which it had been often applied. There 
was an order issued by the king on the 
the 20th of January, 1570, in which 
he expressly recalls it, because the 
merchants at Antwerp, both subjects 
and foreigners, had presented strong 
remonstrances against it. In the year 
1585, the Earner von Assurantic 
(Chamber of Insurance) was estab¬ 
lished at Amsterdam. In the year 
1600 regulations respecting insurance 
were formed by the city of Middleburg, 
in Zealand. It appears that the first 
regulation respecting insurances in 
England were made in the year 1601. 
The insurers had, before that period, 
conducted themselves in such a man¬ 
ner that the utmost confidence was 
reposed in their honesty, and that, on 
this account, few or no disputes had 
arisen. In the year 1604, regulations 
were formed respecting insurance at 
Rotterdam, and in 1610 were drawn up 
those of Genoa. In 1612 the Insur¬ 
ance Chamber of Amsterdam was es¬ 
tablished by public authority, and 
received several privileges. Malynes 
asserts that the people of Antwerp 
were first taught insurance by the 
English, and says that as the mer¬ 
chants assembled for transacting 





G10 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


business in Lombard street, so-called 
because Italians from Lombardy bad 
lombards there, or houses for lending 
money on pledges. Long before the 
building of the Exchange it became 
customary, as it was in his time (1622) 
to be guided in policies by what was 
done in Lombard street in London. 

Insurance companies to indemnify 
losses sustained by fire, were first 
formed toward the middle of the la§t 
century, though houses were insured 
by individuals much earlier. The fire- 
office at Paris was established in 1745; 
that of the electorate of Hanover in 
1750; that of Nassau-Weilburg in 
1751; those of Bruns wick-Wolfen- 
buttel and Wirtemburg in 1754; that 
of Anspach in 1754; that of Baden- 
Durlach in 1758; that of the County 
of Mark in 1764; those of Saxe-Wei- 
mar and Eisenach in 1768, and that of 
the Society of the Clergy, in the Mark 
of Brandenburg, to insure goods and 
household furniture, was established in 
1769. In the beginning of the seven¬ 
teenth century, a proposal was made 
by some ingenious person that all pro¬ 
prietors of land should insure the 
homes of their subjects against fire, on 
their paying so much per cent, annu¬ 
ally, according to the value of them. 
The author of this scheme presented it 
to Count Anthony Gunther von Olden¬ 
burg, in the year 1609, as a means of 
finance. The author in his plan said 
that as many fires happened by which 
a great number of people lost their 
property, the Count might lay before 
his subjects the danger of such acci¬ 
dents, and propose to them that if they 
would, either singly or united, put a 
value on their houses, and for every 
hundred dollars valuation, pay to him, 
yearly, one dollar, he, on the other hand, 
would engage that in the case, by the 
will of God, their houses should be re¬ 


duced to ashes, (the misfortunes of war 
excepted,) he would take upon himself 
the loss and pay the sufferers as much 
money as might be sufficient to re¬ 
build them; and that all persons, both 
natives and foreigners, who might be 
desirous of sharing in the benefits of 
this institution, should not be excepted. 

The first regular office set up in Lon¬ 
don was the Hand in Hand in 1696. 
The first Life Insurance office estab¬ 
lished in London was the Ammicable . 
This company was chartered in 1706, 
in consequence of application made to 
Her Majesty, Queen Anne, by Sir 
Thomas Allen and others. The first 
Marine insurance was the Royal Ex¬ 
change Insurance and the London In¬ 
surance in 1720. It is not positively 
known when the first insurance com¬ 
pany was formed in the United States. 


SUGAR. 

Sugar has been used from an early 
period in the world’s history, in some 
form or other, as an article of food; in¬ 
deed the practice of sweetening food is 
more ancient than sugar. The an¬ 
cients used honey for the purpose. 
Dioscorides, in the first century, refers 
to a kind of honey produced by canes 
growing in India and in Arabia Felix. 
Pliny records the same fact, but re¬ 
marks that it was used only in medi¬ 
cine. Sugar was not known in North¬ 
ern Europe as an article of food until 
the time of the Crusades. The sugar¬ 
cane was introduced into Cyprus from 
Asia, and about the year 1148 is said to 
have been largely cultivated there, at 
which time it was transplanted to Ma¬ 
deira, and from thence, in 1506, to the 
West Indies. There is evidence that 
the sugar-cane was cultivated on the 
coasts of Andulusia before the invasion 
of the Arabs in the middle of the 








THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


611 


fifteenth century. The Arabs had 
many sugar factories, and with them 
probably originated the art of boiling 
down the juice for the production of 
sugar. The refining of the raw 
product is of later date, and is referred 
to a Venetian. In the year 1597, a 
refinery existed in Dresden. Sugar- 
candy is mentioned in the Alchemia of 
Libarius in 1595. Up to the close of 
the seventeenth century, syrup and 
honey were used by the poorer classes 
in Germany for sugar, and it was not 
until tea and coffee had came into gen¬ 
eral use that sugar was regarded as one 
of the necessaries of life. In the year 
1847, Margraf, a German chemist, dis¬ 
covered that cane sugar existed ready 
formed in the roots of many plants, es¬ 
pecially in beet root; but nearly half a 
century elapsed before any attempt 
was made to establish a factory of beet¬ 
root sugar; this was done by Archard 
at Cumoom, in Silesia, not, however, 
with any great success. The first en¬ 
ergetic impulse that was given to the 
manufacture was by Napoleon, who, 
anxious to ruin the colonial trade of 
Great Britain, ordered the blockade of 
the continent, and in order to supply 
the demand for sugar, which formed so 
important a part of our commerce, he 
offered premiums for the best modes of 
separating sugar from beet root. The 
chemists of France exerted themselves 
with their accustomed method and 
skill. Extensive experiments were 
made on the cultivation of the beet¬ 
root, and the best methods of obtaining 
the juice and extracting the sugar 
from it. Factories were soon at work, 
and the first sample of French beet¬ 
root sugar was conveyed at once to the 
Emperor who received it with joy, and 
placed it under a glass case as one of 
the choicest ornaments of his drawing¬ 
room. 


A NATIONAL THANKSGIVING. 

It was not until during the war that 
it became customary for the President 
of the United States to appoint, by 
proclamation, a National Thanksgiv¬ 
ing day. The celebration of the day 
itself began in the very early history 
of the Massachusetts Colony, and has 
spread from New England westward 
and southward over the whole land. 
For many years it was appointed in the 
various States by the Governor thereof, 
and, there being no concert of action 
between them, would be held at differ¬ 
ent dates, though almost always on a 
Thursday. An effort was made to unite 
on one day—the last Thursday in No¬ 
vember—as the day of Thanksgiving, 
and in 1859 thirty of the thirty-three 
States then existing held their Thanks¬ 
giving holiday on that day. In 1863 
President Lincoln issued his first Na¬ 
tional Thanksgiving proclamation, and 
the custom of Presidential Thanksgiv¬ 
ings has since been kept up. 

The National Thanksgiving day ap¬ 
pointed by a Presidential proclamation, 
is, however, by no means so new an 
idea as is generally supposed. Presi¬ 
dent Lincoln was only following the 
example set by President Washington, 
in the first year of his Presidency. 
Washington was inaugurated on the 
4th of March, 1789. On the third of 
October of the same year he issued a 
proclamation for a National Thanks¬ 
giving day to be held on Thursday, 
Nov. 26, 1789. That first National 
Thanksgiving proclamation is worth 
reproducing here: 

Whereas, It is the duty of all nations to 
acknowledge the providence of Almighty 
God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His 
benefits, and humbly implore His protection 
and favor; and, whereas, both Houses of Con¬ 
gress have, by their joint committees, re¬ 
quested me to recommend to the people of 
the United States a day of public thanksgiv¬ 
ing and prayer, to be observed by acknowb 






612 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


edging with grateful hearts the many and 
signal favors of Almighty God, especially by 
affording them an opportunity of peaceably 
establishing a form of government for their 
safety and happiness. Now, therefore, I do 
recommend and assign Thursday, the twenty- 
sixth day of November next, to be devoted 
by the people of these States to the service of 
the great and glorious Being, who is the 
beneficent author of all the good that was, 
that is, that will be. 

That we then all unite in rendering unto 
Him our sincere and humble thanks for His 
kind care and protection of the people of this 
country previous to its becoming a nation, 
for the signal and manifold mercies, and the 
favorable interposition of His providence in 
the course and conclusion of the late war; 
for the great degree of tranquility, union and 
plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the 
peaceable and rational manner in which we 
have been enabled to establish constitutions 
of government for our safety and happiness, 
and particularly the national one more lately 
instituted; for civil and religious liberty 
with which we are blessed, and the means 
we have of acquiring and diffusing useful 
knowledge, and in general for all the great 
and various favors which He hath been 
pleased to confer upon us. And also that 
we may then unite in most humbly offering 
our prayers and supplications to the great 
Lord and Ruler of nations, and beseech Him 
to pardon our national and other transgres¬ 
sions; to enable us all, whether in public or 
private stations, to perform our several and 
national duties properly and prudently; to 
render our national government a blessing to 
all people, constantly being a government of 
wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly 
and faithfully executed and obeyed; to pro¬ 
tect and guide all sovereigns and nations 
(especially such as have shown kindness unto 
us), and bless them with good government, 
peace and concord; to promote the knowl¬ 
edge of true religion and virtue, and the 
increase of science among us; and generally 
to grant unto all mankind such a degree of 
temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be 
best. 

Given under my hand, at the city of New 
York, the third day of October, in the year 
of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and 
eighty-nine. George Washington. 


DIDO. 

“ Cutting a Dido ” is a phrase older 
than most people imagine. The hus¬ 
band of Dido, Princess of Tyre, was 
Sichaeus, priest of Hercules, and that 
respected gentleman was murdered for 
his wealth, by Pygmalion, brother to 
Dido. The widowed Princess was 


enabled to escape from Tyre, having 
with her the wealth of her husband, 
and accompanied by a number of dis¬ 
affected nobles. After a variety of ad¬ 
ventures they landed upon the coast of 
Africa, where Dido bargained with the 
natives for as much land as she could 
inclose in a bull’s hide. Selecting a 
large, tough hide, she caused it to be 
cut in the smallest possible threads* 
with which she enclosed a large tract 
of couiArj\ on which the city of Car¬ 
thage soon began to rise. The natives 
were bound by the letter of their bar¬ 
gain, and allowed the cunning queen 
to have her way; and after that, when 
any one had played off a sharp trick, 
they said they had “ cut a Dido.” That 
was almost three thousand years ago* 
and the saying has come down to our 
day. 


CELERY AS A NERVINE. 


A correspondent of the Practical 
Farmer says: “ I have known many men 
and women too, who, from various 
causes,had become so much affected with 
nervousness that when they stretched 
out tneir hands they shook like aspen 
leaves on windy days; and by a daily 
moderate use of the blanched foot stalks 
ot the celery leaves as a salad, they be¬ 
came as strong and steady in limbs as 
other people. I have known others so 
very nervous that the least annoyance 
put them in a state of agitation, who 
were in almost constant perplexity and 
fear, and who were effectually cured by a 
daily moderate use of blanched celery 
as a salad at meal times. I have known 
others cured by using celery for palpi¬ 
tation of the heart. 


Musical notes, as used, invented, 
in 1338. 










613 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


HISTORY AND NATIVITY OF VEGE¬ 
TABLES. 


The Potato. This plant is supposed 
to be a native of South America. It was 
brought to England from Carolina in 
1586. When the Spaniards conquered 
Peru in the sixteenth century, they 
carried some potatoes to Europe, and 
sent them to the Pope. The French 
called them the “Apples of the u Earth.” 
Admiral Drake sent some to a friend 
to plant, telling him that the fruit 
would be nutritious and excellent, and 
very useful in Europe. He actually 
planted the tubers, and they grew nice¬ 
ly. When the seed balls were ripe, he 
took these instead of the tubes, and 
fried them in butter, seasoned them 
with sugar and cinnamon and placed 
them before some company as a great 
rarity. Of course they were disgusting 
to the taste and the assembly concluded 
that the fruit would not ripen in Europe. 
The gardener pulled up the plants 
and burned them. A gentleman who 
chanced to be present, stepped upon 
one of the baked potatoes as it lay in 
the ashes, when it broke open and he 
noticed that it was white as snow, and 
mealy, and had an agreeable smell, that 
he tasted and found it palatable. The 
new vegetable was thus rescued, but 
for a century after it was only cultiv¬ 
ated in gardens. In 1600 the queen 
of England made the remark in her 
house, that a pound of potatoes cost 
two shillings, about 50 cents. 

The Sweet Potato is believed by some 
to be of Asiatic origin, or that the 
American and Asiatic plants are con¬ 
sidered as different species. Upon the 
Antilles it was found as early as 1526. 
Columbus brought it with other novel¬ 
ties to Europe and presented it to Isa¬ 
bella. C. ‘Clusius mentions that as 
early as 1601 he had eaten it in Spain. 


The Tomato is thought to be an 
American plant. Although cultivated 
at present in the East Indies, its culti¬ 
vation there dates only from the dis¬ 
covery of America. It is quite prob¬ 
able that this plant was grown in 
Mexico at a very early period. It is a 
Newport, R. I., tradition, that toma¬ 
toes were first eaten in this country in 
about 1823, in a house still standing 
on the corner of Corne and Mill Streets. 
There was an eccentric Italian painter, 

Michele Felice Corne, who bought a 
stable on the street now called for him, 

fashioned it into a dwelling house, and 
there lived and died. He was in the 
habit of eating “Love Apples” as they 
were then called, and were thought at 
that time to be poisonous. They were 
looked upon as curiosities and prized 
for their beauty. As a very tempting 
delicacy some were brought to an in¬ 
valid, and the attendants were horror- 
stricken with the thought that she 
would be poisoned. 

The Turnip , is derived from a plant 
growing wild at the present time in 
Russia and Siberia. The Celts and Ger¬ 
mans attempted the cultivation of this 
plant between the Baltic Sea and the 
Caucasus, when they were driven to 
make use of nutritious sorts. 

The Parsnip , both wild and cultiva¬ 
ted is common in the whole of Europe. 
It has also been known and cultivated 
in Northwestern France for many cen¬ 
turies, during which time many new 
varieties have been developed. 

The Onion was cultivated by the 
Greeks in particular portions of their 
gardens. The Island of Cimolus was 
endowed with the name of Onion Is¬ 
land, because onions of remarkable ex¬ 
cellence were cultivated upon it. Her¬ 
odotus states that in the building of a 
pyramid in Egypt, the garlic, onions 
and horse-radish used by the workmen 








614 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


cost 1,600 talents. It was indigenous 
from Palestine to India, whence it ex¬ 
tended to China, Japan, Europe and 
North America, and reached America 
soon after its discovery. 

The Egg-plant is of Southern Asia 
and Indian Archipelago. It is of very 
ancient cultivation although no longer 
met with there in a wild state. It came 
by the way of the East to Europe, 
even in the time of the Romans, and 
has been distributed over its entire 
Southern part. It is cultivated at the 
present day on the western coast of 
Africa and the Islands of Mauritius, 
and has become an inhabitant of Ame¬ 
rica since the eighteenth century. 

The Cabbage. This original plant 
occurs wild at the present day, on the 
steep chalk rocks of the sea province 
of England, and on the coast of Den¬ 
mark, and of Northwestern France. 
It is a question whether this plant did 
not at one time have a much wider di¬ 
stribution when the climatic peculiari¬ 
ties of Europe were different from what 
they now are. It also found its way 
into India and China. The young 
shoots were used in Greece as a dinner 
dish. 

The Asparagus is a plant of the sea¬ 
shore and river banks of Southern 
Europe, and Crimea. It is not found 
either wild or cultivated in Greece. 
There are some species belonging to 
the Mediterranean regions. It is raised 
very extensively at the present day in 
North America. 

The Spinach is native in the regions 
between Caucasus and the Persian Gulf. 
Although it was cultivated in Persia 
and Arabia in the time of the Romans, 
neither they or the Greeks were ac¬ 
quainted with it. The Dutch Spinach 
is a variety of the common kind, 
produced in the course of cultivation. 


Lettuce is a variety indigenous to the 
Southern Caucasus, and the neighbor¬ 
ing regions, and thence distributed 
over the whole of Europe to Altai. 
The ancient Greeks cultivated two var- 
rieties. Lettuce was known to the 
Persians in the time of Cambyses, and 
it is now one of the prized dishes of 
the Greeks. It is now grown in all 
parts of the world. 

The Celery is a sea-shore plant occur¬ 
ring on saline soil on the coast of the 
Mediterranean, in Greece and in Turkey, 
in its original form and of a bitter taste. 
It is mentioned by Theophrastus, and 
seems to have come very early into use. 
At the present day, the cultivated plant 
is widely distributed in Greece. 

Carrots. It appears that the Greeks 
and Romans cultivated this plant in 
their gardens. In grows wild in all 
Europe, Asia and North America. As 
early as the seventeenth century, only 
the white and yellow varieties were 
known. 

The Radish. It is probable that 
China may be considered the native 
land of this plant, where as in the 
neighboring Japan, it runs into several 
varieties, among them an oil plant. 

Horse Radish. This plant origin¬ 
ated in Southern Russia, and the neigh¬ 
boring countries. Its growth extended 
from Finland to Astrakan and even to 
Turkey in Europe. 

The Cauliflower was cultivated as a 
culinary vegetable by the Greeks and 
Romans. Its culture was little attend¬ 
ed to in England till the end of the 
seventeenth century. Soon after it rap¬ 
idly increased, and prior to the French 
Revolution, it found an article of ex¬ 
port from England to Holland. It is 
entirely the product of cultivation. 

The Beet. The original stock of the 
common, as well as that of the Red 
Beet, grows wild on the sea shore in 









615 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


Greece, as also on some of the Canary 
Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean. It was 
cultivated for food by the Greeks, as it 
is at the present day by the Persians 
and natives of India. The Romans 
were acquainted with two varieties. 

The Pea. The culture of the pea 
goes back to a remote period, and was 
held in high estimation by the Greeks 
and Romans. At the present day it is 
found growing wild upon the hills of 
the Isthmus of the Crimea, and its na¬ 
tive country was probably originally 
along the coast of the Black Sea. 

The jBean. Of all the pod fruits, it 
is thought that the bean has been long¬ 
est known and most widely distributed. 
It was cultivated by the Jews and was 
considered sacred by the Greeks and 
Romans. A temple dedicated to the 
God of Beans Kyanetes, stood upon 
the sacred road to Eleusis, he having 
first cultivated beans. The Bean Feast 
which the Athenians celebrated in 
honor of Apollo, was characterized by 
the use of beans. The Egyptians con¬ 
sidered it an impure fruit, and did not 
venture to touch it. Pythagoras even 
forbid his scholars to eat beans. The 
black speck on the white wings of the 
flowers, was formerly looked upon as 
the written character of death, for 
which the bean in ancient times passed 
as the symbol of death. 

The Cucumber belongs originally to 
the East and Central Asia, and has 
been used from a very early date, as 
food for man and animals, although it 
served the purpose to a limited extent 
on account of the small amount of nu¬ 
triment contained in it. Charlemagne 
ordered that they should be planted on 
his estates. It found its way to the 
New World soon after the discovery 
of America. 

The Pumpkin. The precise home 
of this vegetable is not accurately 


known, but it is thought to be South¬ 
ern Asia. The Jews cultivated Pump¬ 
kins under their kings. They were 
also known to the Greeks and Romans. 
After the discovery of America, the 
plants quickly found their way to the 
New World so that even New Zealan¬ 
ders were acquainted with them. 

The Squash is a specie of the gourd 
or off-shoot of the pumpkin and it is 
only in the cultivation that has brought 
it to such perfection. There are many 
fine varieties in this country as the 
climate seems to be well adapted 
for it. 


NATIVITY OF FRUITS. 

The earliest fruits mentioned in his¬ 
tory are the grape, the apple, and the 
fig, and the former having been culti¬ 
vated about the time of the deluge. The 
art of grafting was well known to the 
ancients. It was not known in the age 
of Homer, and was probably first prac¬ 
ticed not far from the time of Hesoid. 
It was familiar to the ancient Greeks 
of a later period. The Dutch made 
early advancement in the cultivation 
of fruit and at the close of the sixteenth 
century they were familiar with the 
principal kinds of fruit now cultivated. 
The French also made good progress. 
In the United States the art and the 
materials for its practice have been 
mostly derived from England and to 
some extent from France and Ger¬ 
many. 

The Apple originates from a specie 
of crabs which grows wild in most parts 
of Europe. Apples were raised in the 
gardens of the Phoenicians. The Rom¬ 
ans produced numerous kinds, and 
Pliny also in his time knew of thirty- 
six varieties. The Siberian Crab is a 
native of Siberia, but is cultivated in 
Europe and the United States; the wild 







616 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


crab is also found in this country but 
of inferior quality. 

The Pear was cultivated by the 
Romans. It was also common in Syria, 
Egypt and Greece, and from there was 
transplanted into Italy. It is not a 
native of North America but was intro¬ 
duced from the other continent. It 
grows wild in China and Western Asia. 
Landerer states that the wild pear tree 
grows in Greece on the driest declivi¬ 
ties of the mountains as a small shrub 
and thorny plant and that the fruit is 
by no means pleasant. 

The Peach is a native of Persia and 
China and its cultivation goes back to 
the farthest antiquity. The peach is 
the Tao mentioned in the books of 
Confucius in the tenth century before 
Christ. It was cultivated in the year 
1550 in Britain and was introduced in 
this country by early settlers about 
1580. 

The Plum originally came from the 
Caucasus,and the mountains of Talysch. 
It reached Italy about the time of Cato, 
and Pliny mentions numerous varieties. 
They have become naturalized and are 
produced in this country in great 
abundance. 

The Apricot was brought by Alexan¬ 
der the Great, from Armenia to Greece 
and Epirus, from which countries it 
reached Italy. It is largely cultivated 
in Japan, and the mountains west of 
Pekin are covered with a natural 
growth of the fruit. 

The Quince was known in Greece in 
the earliest times and its fruit dedicated 
to the Goddess of Love. It is probably 
native to Northern India and was car¬ 
ried by way of Ispahan and Syria, of 
Greece. It was esteemed very highly 
by the Greeks and the Romans. It was 
brought to Italy from Kydron, a city 
of the Island of Crete. 


The Cherry comes original^ from 
Asia. It is said that it was brought 
into Italy 69 B, C., by the Roman gen¬ 
eral Lucullus. Pliny says the Romans 
had eight varieties a hundred years 
after in cultivation and they were after¬ 
wards carried to all parts of Europe. 
Soon after the settlement of this count¬ 
ry the seeds of the cultivated cherry 
were brought both from England and 
Holland. 

The Mulberry was native to and 
brought at a very early period from 
North Persia, the Caucasus, Asia Minoi 
to Greece. Theophrastes was aquaint- 
ed with it. It is only at a late period 
that this useful tree, after it had been 
brought by Lucius Vitellus from Syria 
to Rome, was successfully reared in 
Italy, after all earlier experiments ac¬ 
cording to Pliny, had been conducted 
in vain. It has attained its greatest 
extent and variety of form in Persia, 
N orthern India and China. 

The Watermelon is supposed to be¬ 
long originally to the East and Central 
Asia. The Egyptians became aquaint- 
ed with the watermelon during their 
captivity and for the want of which 
they bewailed so loudly in the wilder¬ 
ness. They were known to and came 
with the Arabians to the west. 

The Musk-Melon. It is quite doubt 
ful which is the native country of this 
fruit, but is supposed to be a native of 
Persia. They are cultivated largely in 
this country as the climate seems to be 
well adapted for its growth. 


THE GRAPE AND SMALL FRUIT. 

The Grape, which so long cultivated 
and naturalized in the middle and 
southern portions of Europe, is not a 
native of that continent, but came orig¬ 
inally from Persia, where it grows in 
the highest perfection. As civilization 







617 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


advanced, the plant followed to Egypt, 
Greece and Sicily and gradually into 
Italy. The Romans carried it into 
Britain about two hundred years after 
Christ. The seeds and plants were 
brought to America by the emigrants 
and colonists soon after the settlement 
of this country. 

The Gooseberry is a native of the 
North of Europe. The meridian of the 
gooseberry is Lancashire, England. 
The weavers of Lancashire take a great 
interest in this fruit where it is raised 
in its greatest perfection, and they pub¬ 
lish a work every year called a Goose¬ 
berry book. 

The Raspberry originated from the 
bramble cultivated on Mount Ida. It 
appears to have first been introduced 
into the gardens of the South of Europe 
from Mount Ida. The name is prob¬ 
ably derived from (Raspo Italian) from 
the rasping roughness of prickley wood. 
In Scotland it is still called raspis. 

The Strawberry is a native of Europe, 
Asia, North and South America; 
though the species found in different 
parts of the world are of distinct habit 
each through cultivation have produced 
a different class of fruit. The name is 
understood to have arisen from the an¬ 
cient practice of laying straw between 
the plants to keep the fruit clean. 
Others think the origin of the name 
comes from the custom of children 
stringing the berries on straws. It is 
considered one of the most wholesome 
of fruits and it is said that Linnseus 
cured himself of the gout by partaking 
freely of strawbarries. 

The Blackberry is of the same specie 
as the bramble or raspberry. It is cul¬ 
tivated in our gardens at the present 
day, and is mentioned by Palladius in 
his time as a garden plant. 

The Elderberry is a low tree and a 
native of Europe; several parts of this 


plant are used in medicine. It is very 
common in this country. 

The Cranberry is a native of bott- 
this country and Europe. The Euro¬ 
pean is smaller in its growth and pro¬ 
duces a fruit of inferior quality. The 
same may be said of a variety grown 
in Russia. It is an admitted fact that 
those grown in this country, are the 
finest in the world. 

The Rhubarb , or Pie-plant is a native 
of Scythia. It is cultivated for its 
fleshy acid petroles of leaf stalks which 
are used in early spring as a substitute 
fruit, for pies etc. 


GRAVES OF OUR PRESIDENTS. 

The grave of the first and greatest of 
our Presidents is that which needs the 
briefest description, so familiar is every 
American with the scene and story of 
Mount Vernon. The vault, which was 
built in obedience to the provisions of 
Washington’s will, is a roomy brick 
vault, with an arched roof, very simple 
in design and construction, and so sub¬ 
stantial as to promise to endure for an¬ 
other century. On a marble tablet in 
an arch is the inscription: 

Within this Enclosure 
rest the Remains of 
General George Washington. 

Two Presidents, father and son, John 
and John Quincy Adams, sleep side by 
side beneath the Unitarian church of 
Quincy, Mass. The tomb is an apart¬ 
ment in the front part of the cellar, 
walled in with large blocks of roughly 
faced granite. A granite slab, seven 
feet by three, with a huge clasp and 
padlock, and massive hinges of wrought 
iron, all red with rust, forms the door. 
Within, the bodies lay in leaden cask¬ 
ets, placed within cases each hewn from 












618 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


a single block of stone. The brick 
furnace for heating the church is close 
to the door, and the dim and dusty 
vault, which is rarely visited, serves as 
a storeroom for light wagons, sleighs, 
and such property. 

Huge, sweeping elms and thrifty 
horse-chestnuts embower it completely 
and and give it an air of quiet and re¬ 
tirement, though the daily bustle of 
business is loud in the streets around it. 


Thomas Jefferson’s grave is in a thick 
growth of woods, a few hundred yards 
to the right of the embowered road 
leading from Chariotteville, Va., up to 
Monticello. The spot is as lonesome 
and solitary as could be desired; the 
“ancient and venerable oaks” are there, 
and a single “evergreen,” whose murmur 
alone, and not that of a brook, “breaks 
the stillness.” Its thirty graves are 
partly enclosed by a brick wall about 
100 feet square and ten feet high, 
which on the south side has tippled 
over, and now lies in courses of brick 
and crumbling mortar, level with the 
ground. The sole inscription is: 

Born, April 2. 0. S. 1743. 

Died, July 4th 1826. 

“The region,” said a writer describ¬ 
ing the home of James Madison, 
Montpelier, four miles from Orange, 
Va., “is one where Nature has shed in 
great beauty the softest picture of hill 
and dale, forest and glade.” Admittance 
is gained by a small and plain iron gate 
on the east side, with a plate inscribed 
“Madison, 1820.” Four graves are 
within the enclosure. Over one of them, 
a well defined and neatly turfed mound, 
rising to a height of twenty feet from a 
pedestal of four pieces, is a slender and 
graceful granite obelisk, bearing in 
large, plain, sunken letters near the 
base, this inscription: 


Madison, Born March 16, 1751. 

he date of death, June 28,1836, is 
not given. 

Hollywood cemetery, at Richmond,. 
Va., is indeed, beautiful for situation. 
Near its extreme southwestern limit, 
repose the remains of James Monroe. 
Five feet under ground, in a vault of 
brick and granite, were placed Monroe’s 
remains. They are covered by a huge 
block of polished Virginia marble eight 
feet long and four feet square, on wliich 
rests what is called the “sarcophagus”, 
a granite block nearly as large as the 
pedestal, but wrought into the shape 
of an ordinary coffin. The body lies 
from west to east; on the northern side 
of the “sarcophagus” is a brass plate, 
now quite black, with this inscription: 

James Monroe, 

Born in Westmoreland County, 28tk 
April 1758. 

Died in the city of New York, 4tk 
July, 1831. 

By order of the general Assembly, 
his remains were removed to this ce¬ 
metery, 5th July, 1858, as an evidence 
of the affection of Virginia for her good 
and Honored son. 

Eleven miles from Nashville, on the 
pretty Lebanon pike, from which a 
carriage drive between tall spreading 
cedars conducts, is the Hermitage, a 
two storied house of brick, with por¬ 
ticos supported by Corinthian pillars. 
In a corner of the garden, eighty yards 
from the dwelling lie the great Presi¬ 
dent and his wife, under a massive mon¬ 
ument of Tennessee limestone. In the 
centre of the platform is a pyramid 
resting on a square; on the left is a 
stone just over the body of the Presi¬ 
dent. with this inscription: 

General Andrew Jackson. 

Bom March 15, 1767. 

Died June 8, 1845. 












THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


619 


A granite stone and a few hickory 
poles, whereon on festival occasions, 
when her great son ruled the United 
States, the sleepy village of Kinderhook, 
in Columbia County, would hang out 
rejoicing flags—are all that recall 
to resident or stranger Martin Van 
Buren. The President’s grave is in the 
centre of the plot; above it rises a plain 
granite shaft, fifteen feet high, without 
a particle of carving or ornamentation. 
About half-way up, upon one face is 
the following inscription in large black 
letters: 

Martin Van Buren, 

8th President of the United States. 

Born December 5th, 1782. 

Died July 24th 1862. 


The ashes of William Henry Harri¬ 
son, the great whig chieftain and hero 
of the frontier war, the occupant for 
only a month of the chair to which he 
was elevated in a fantastic and pictur¬ 
esque campaign that will never be for¬ 
gotten, repose, with those of his wife 
and children, in a plain brick vault on 
the summit of a hillock at North Bend, 
Ohio. A flat stone at the height of 
about two and a half feet from the 
ground, roofs the brick work of the 
vault. It does not bear a letter of in¬ 
scription. But a short time ago it was 
put in order by Harrison’s son, John 
Scott Harrison, who himself died and 
was unearthed to serve as a subject in 
a Cincinnati dissecting room. 


Just ten yards east of Monroe’s 
bird cage grave in fair Hollywood 
Cemetery, Richmond, Va., is a turfed 
mound. 

Not a stone is there to tell that be¬ 
neath, lies the body of John Tyler. 


James Knox Polk died at his home 
in Nashville on the 15th of June 1849 
after a short illness. A few feet from 
the gate of the Polk Mansion, a white 
shell path conducts to the tomb of the 
ex-president. The tendrils of a plant 
of Kenilworth ivy cling to one of the 
columns. On the architrave of the 
east front are engraved these words; 

James Knox Polk, 

10th President of the United States. 

Born November 2, 1795. 

Died June 15th 1849. 

Zachary Taylor’s body now occupies 
its third grave and soon will find a final 
restingplace in the fourth. It was first 
placed in the cemetery at Washington, 
and thence removed to the Taylor 
homestead, five miles back of Louisville, 
Ky., whence a few months ago it was 
taken to Cane Hill Cemetery, at Louis¬ 
ville. The old family burial ground 
had in years of neglect gone to com¬ 
plete ruin, the rotten palings had 
crumbled away or been laid prostrate 
by storms or breachy cattle, and weeds 
and rank grass were matted over the 
sunken mounds, when Taylor’s nephew, 
Richard Taylor, removed the bones of 
his distinguished relative to Cane Hill, 
where their present resting-place is in¬ 
dicated by a plain slab of white marble, 
In the course of time they will be taken 
to Frankfort, where over them the 
State will erect an appropriate monu¬ 
ment. 


Three miles north of Buffalo, where 
the bright and shallow Scagaquada 
ripples ov^er its rocky terraces of lime¬ 
stone and through fair groves of oak, 
beech and maple, is Forest Lawn Ceme¬ 
tery. Almost upon the crest of the 
hill and near the center of the cemetery 
rises the obelisk of Scotch granite that 
marks the resting place of Millard Fill- 














620 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


more. On the northern face of the 
obelisk is the following inscription: 
Millard Fillmore, 

Born January 7th, 1800. 

Died March 8, 1874. 


After an illness of three months 
Franklin Pierce died at the residence 
of Mr. Willard Williams, Concord, N. 
H., at 2 o’clock on the morning of 
October 8, 1869. The Pierce lot is at 
the northwestern corner of the Minot 
enclosure, which adjoins the Old Ceme¬ 
tery and contains about an acre of level 
ground. On the plinth is the word 
‘‘Pierce”, in large raised letters, and on 
the panel of the die this inscription: 

Franklin Pierce. 

Born November 22, 1804. 

Died October 8, 1869. 

Buchanan died at Wheatland, Pa., 
on the 1st of June, 1868. His grave is 
in Woodward Hill Cemetery, on a bluff 
in the southeastern part of the city, 
around which creeps the beautiful 
Conestoga. On the end of the die fac¬ 
ing the main avenue is the word 
“Buchanan”; on the side facing the 
chapel is the following inscription: 

Here rest the remains of 
James Buchanan, 

15th President of the United States. 

Born in Franklin County Pa. 

April 23, 1791. 

Died at Wheatland, June 1, 1868. 


Lincoln, born in a log hut, is buried 
under a towering pile of marble, granite 
and bronze. Oak Ridge Cemetery, a 
mile and a half north of Springfield, 
Illinois, contains ninety-seven acres of 
high, broken land clad with a luxuriant 
turf and thickly dotted with trees. 
From the center rises the shaft, 12 feet 
square at the base and 8 at the top, 89 
feet four inches from the ground, with 


a winding staircase within. Shields of 
polished granite, bearing the names of 
the states and linked by two bands of 
like material, encircle the square three 
feet below its edge. On the pedestals, 
at the corners, are heroic groups in 
bronze, representing the naval and 
three branches of the military service. 
Seven feet above them, on the southern 
side of the shaft, on a pedestal whereon 
the national coat-of-arms is carved, 
stands the statue of Lincoln. 

In the block below the escutcheon is 
the inscription in letters of polished 
granite: 

Lincoln. 


The monument over Andrew John¬ 
son’s grave was unvailed recently. 

On the plinth, of marble, 4^ feet 
square and 3 £ feet high, is the inscrip¬ 
tion, written by Thomas Kinsella, of 
the Brooklyn Eagle: 

Andrew Johnson, 
Seventeenth President U. S. A. 
Born December 29, 1808. 

Died July 31, 1875. 

“His faith in the people never wavered”. 

Thus sleep in death the seventeen 
Presidents of the United States. 


James A. Garfield was assassinated 
July 2, 1881. Died at Elberon, Sep¬ 
tember 19,1881. A magnificent mon¬ 
ument has been erected by public sub¬ 
scription, in Lake View Cemetery, 
overlooking the waters of Lake Erie. 
The tower stands 150 feet high, rising 
from broad terraces. A spiral stair¬ 
case leads to top of tower. The re¬ 
mains of the President are inclosed in a 
crypt below the level of the chamber 
under the carved tomb. 


Chester A. Arthur died suddenly 
of apoplexy at his residence, No. 123 














THE PEOPLES* LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


621 


Lexington avenue, New York, Thurs¬ 
day morning, Nov. 18, 1886. The 
funeral services were held on the fol¬ 
lowing Monday at the Church of the 
Heavenly Rest; on the same day a 
special train conveyed his remains to 
Albany, where they were placed by the 
side of his wife, in the family burial 
place in Rural Cemetery. 

Ulysses S. Grant died Thursday, July 
23, 1885. The remains were taken to 
New York, escorted by a detachment 
of U. S. troops and a’body of the 
G. A. R., composed of veterans of the 
war. A public funeral was held in 
that city on Saturday, Aug. 8, which 
was the most magnificent spectacle of 
the kind in this country. The body 
was deposited in a temporary tomb in 
Riverside Park, overlooking the Hudson 
river, where it is proposed to erect an 
imposing monument, for which $125,- 
000 was subscribed up to June, 1887. 


GELATINE. 

If the skins and membranous tissues 
of animals are boiled in water, the pro¬ 
duct, on cooling, becomes a jelly, more 
or less stiff, according to the quantity 
and kind of tissues used. Under a 
treatment but slightly different, the 
tendons, ligaments, horns, hoofs and 
bones yield the same material. We 
give to this product the generic name 
of Gelatine, but know its impure and 
coarser forms as Glue, and the finest 
and purest as Isinglass, which is mainly 
employed in the preparation of jellies, 
creams, blanc-mange, and various table 
delicacies and other purposes, such as 
the clarifying of liquors, the dressing 
of silks and other goods. 

It is interesting, however, to notice 
that it is upon this very substance 
which we extract from the tissues of 


the animal’s skin to make our delicate 
jellies, that we also depend to make the 
leather for our shoes. Though itself 
so soluble, when mixed with tannin it 
forms an insoluble compound. In the 
process of leather-making the object is 
to have the tannic acid contained in 
the bark soak out the particles of Gela¬ 
tine contained in the cells of the skin, 
and turn them into this compound. 

There are various methods for pre¬ 
paring gelatine, which is to be sold as 
an article of food. For the best, the 
skin of calves* heads, and thick pieces 
unfit for leather, are used. All the dif¬ 
ferent processes agree in thoroughly 
cleansing and reducing this to a pulp, 
which is afterward partially dried, and 
cut into any convenient form for hand¬ 
ling ; after which a thorough desicca¬ 
tion, or drying, is secured. 

Isinglass is made from the air-bag or 
swimming-bladder of fishes. That from 
Russia is reckoned best, and is obtained 
from a species of sturgeon found in the 
Black and Caspian Seas and their trib¬ 
utaries. The membrane of its air- 
bladder is carefully cleaned, dried, and 
scraped to form isinglass ; or, folded 
into packages, it is called book isin¬ 
glass ; folded into strips and twisted 
into various forms, it is known as long 
and short staple. All isinglass under¬ 
goes a process of refining before it is 
employed for making table delicacies. 

Isinglass being nearly pure gelatine, 
and prepared without exposure to great 
heat, forms a tougher and much firmer 
cement than glue. Dissolved in water 
and alcohol, and carefully heated to 
the boiling point, with a few drops of 
essential oil to preserve it from mould¬ 
ing, it forms what is known as the 
“diamond cement/* With gum ammo¬ 
niac introduced, it makes a good ce¬ 
ment formending porcelain, and forms 
the adhesive substance of court-plaster. 















622 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


HISTORY OF OUR GOVERNMENT 
COINS. 

As there are many facts concerning 
our government coinage of Gold, Silver, 
mid Copper, which the majority of 
people know very little about, great 
pains have been taken to give the facts 
and value as near as can be ascertained. 
Where there has been any conflict about 
the coinage of certain dates, between 
statistics, purporting to be compiled 
from Mint reports, and the catalogue 
of coin dealers, the correct information 
was received direct from the Sup’t of 
the Mint. Many persons have an idea 
that any old date of silver or copper 
coins are very valuable. There are 
very few of each denomination that are 
considered rare, and while some par¬ 
ticular dates even if in fair or poor con¬ 
dition are in great demand by coin 
collectors; the majority of coins must 
be in good condition to be of any great 
value. 

The coinage of Gold commenced 
with the Eagle in 1793 and continued 
to 1804 inclusive. There were none 
coined from that date until 1838, since 
then they have been coined each year 
to the present time. 

Half Eagles were coined in 1793 to 
the present time with, the exception of 
the years of 1816—1817. 

Quarter Eagles were coined in 1796 
and continued to the present time ex¬ 
cepting the years of 1800,1801, 1809 to 
1820 inclusive, also 1822—1823 and 
1828. 

The Gold dollar was next in order 
and was first coined in 1849 and each 
year to and including 1876. A small 
number of each year since have been 
coined for proofs but not for general 
use. 

Double Eagles twenty dollars were 
coined first in 1850 and each succeed¬ 
ing year to the present time. 


The fifty dollar gold piece was not 
coined by authority of the government, 
but was issued by private parties in 
California between 1851—1855 and 
1856. 

The three dollar gold piece was the 
next in order and was first coined in 
the year 1854 and for each year to 
the present time. Very few however 
were coined during the years of 1863 
—1873 and 1875. 

Silver dollars were coined in 1794 
and to 1804 inclusive. None were 
coined for the next thirty-four years 
from 1805 to 1839 inclusive, with the 
exception of a few in 1836—1839. Since 
that time the coinage has continued to 
the present time. The Trade dollar 
was coined in 1873—74, 75, 76, 77, 78. 
Standard dollar in 1878—79. The 
dollars of 1798 were only pattern pieces 
and not of the regular coinage. The 
most valuable of the whole issue is of 
the date of 1804 which is worth from 
five hundred dollars upwards according 
to the condition of the coin. There 
are many other dates rare and scarce 
including 1794—98, 1836—39, 51, 52, 
54, 55 and 58 which if the dates are 
plain and are perfect otherwise will 
command a price much above their 
face value. 

Half dollars were coined in 1793 and 
to the present time except the years 
1798 99, 1800 and 1816. Rare dates 
are 1794—96, 97, 1801—02, 15, and 36 
with reeded edge, and 1851—52. 

Quarter dollars were first coined in 
1796 and for each year to the present 
time with the exception of 1798—99 
1803-08, 09, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 17, 26,’ 
29 and 1880. The rare dates are 1796 

1804, 23, 27, and 1853 without 
arrows. 

The twenty cent piece was coined 
from 1875 to 1878 and then was dis¬ 
continued by act of Congress, 






THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


623 


Dimes were first coined in 1796 and 
each year to the present time except¬ 
ing the years of 1799—1806, 08,12, 13, 
15, 16, 17, 18,19 and 1826. The rare 
date of the collection is 1804. The 
dates of 1796 to and including 1811 
are scarce; also 1822—24, 46 and 1873 
without arrows. 

Half Dimes were coined in 1793 to 
1873 excepting the dates of 1798—99, 
1804 and 1806 to 1828 inclusive. Since 
1873 the coinage has been discontinued 
by act of Congress. The date of 1802 
is extremely rare; very few specimens 
are known. The other dates which are 
scarce are 1794—96, 1801, 03, 05, 40 
and 1846. 

The Silver three cent piece was first 
coined in 1851 and continued each year 
to 1873. The coinage has been discon¬ 
tinued since that time by act of Con¬ 
gress. There are only the dates of 
1855 and 1873 that are considered rare. 

Nickle five cents were first coined in 
1866 and each succeeding year to the 
present time. The date of 1868 with 
rays is scarce. 

Nickle three cents were first coined 
in 1865 and each year to the present 
time. 

Two cents, the coinage commenced 
in 1864. They were coined each year 
to and including 1873. Since then by 
act of Congress the coinage has been 
discontinued. 

Copper cents were coined in 1793 
and for each year excepting 1815 to 
1857 which was discontinued at that 
time. During that year and 1858 the 
small Nickle cent with flying Eagle 
was coined. There were also a very 
few of the same style in 1856, but they 
are very rare and command a good 
price. From 1859 to 1864 small Nickle 
cents were coined but not of the eagle 
pattern, during that year the Bionze 
cent was coined and for each year to 


the present time. The rare date of the 
collection is 1799 and 1804, also some 
varieties of 1793 and 1809 are valuable. 
While any of the dates are worth more 
than their face value, those mentioned 
are considered by coin collectors hard 
to get in good condition. 

Half cents. The coinage of half 
cent commenced in 1793 and continued 
to 1835 except the years of 1798—99, 
1801—1812 to 1824 inclusive 1827 and 
1830. A very few were coined in 1836. 
Although the dies were cut there were 
none issued from 1837 to 1848 inclusive 
and 1849 small date. In later years a 
limited number of pieces were struck 
from these dies dated 1836—40 to 48 
inclusive and 1849 small date, and since 
then to 1857when the coinage was dis¬ 
continued by act of Congress. Neither 
the records of the Mint or the state¬ 
ment of coinage in the Report of the 
Director of the Mint for 1873 mention 
any coinage of Half cents for those 
years. It is possible they were struck 
without any authority. The rare dates 
are 1793—94, 97, 1800—02, 10 and 
1811. 

There have also been coined a large 
number of pattern or experimental 
pieces which have never been in circu¬ 
lation. Also many coins issued by 
private parties, but without any au¬ 
thority of our government. 


THE LARGEST WHEAT FARM IN THE 

WORLD. 

The largest cultivated wheat farm on 
the globe is said to be the Grandin 
farm, not far from the town of Fargo, 
Dakota. It embraces some 40,000 acres, 
both Government and railway land, 
and lies close to the Red River. Di¬ 
vided into four parts, it has granaries, 
machine shop, elevators, stables for 
200 horses, and room for storing one 










624 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


million bushels of grain. Besides the 
wheat farm there is a stock farm of 
20,000 acres. In seeding time 70 to 
80 men are employed and during har¬ 
vest 250 to 300 men. Seeding begins 
about April 9th and continues through 
the month, and is done very systemat¬ 
ically, the machines following One 
another around the field some four roSs 
apart. Cutting begins August 8th, and 
ends early in September, succeeded by 
the threshing with eight steam thresh¬ 
ers. After threshing the stubble ground 
is plowed with great plows, drawn by 
three horses, and cutting three furrows; 
and this goes on until the weather is 
cold enough to freeze, usually about 
November 1st. There are many other 
large farms in the Territory and in the 
same neighborhood, and they are tilled 
in much the same manner as the Gran- 
din. The surface of the land generally 
is almost level, and the soil rich and 
black. The product of one field of 
2,315 acres is 57,285 bushels—elevator 
weight—some 25 bushels to the acre. 
The average yield of the Dakota wheat 
farm is from 20 to 25 bushels per acre, 
and the concurrent testimony is that 
it is unequalled as a wheat region in 
the world. 


THE LARGEST ORCHARD IN THE 
WORLD. 

The largest orchard in the world is 
doubtless that owned and worked very 
successfully by Mr. Robert McKinstry, 
of Hudson, Columbia Co., N. Y. The 
orchard is situated on the east bank of 
the Hudson River, on high, rolling 
table land, and contains more than 
24,000 apple trees, 1,700 pears, 4,000 
cherries, 500 peaches, 200 plums, 200 
crabs, 1,600 vines, 600 currants, and 
200 chestnuts. The varieties grown 
are: Rhode Island Greening, 7,000; 


Baldwins, 6,000; King of Thompson 
County, 5,000; Astrachans, 800; North¬ 
ern Spy, 500; Wagener, 500; Graven- 
stein, 400; Cranberry Pippins, 200; Ben 
Davis, 200; Duchess of Oldenberg, 200; 
with Jonathans, Hubbardstones, Cay- 
ugas, Yanderveers, Bellflowers, Pear- 
mains, Peck’s ^Pleasant, Twenty-ounce 
Pippins, Russetts, and others in less 
number. The pears are Bartlett, B. 
d’Anjou, Sheldon, Seckel, and Law¬ 
rence, chiefly. Of cherries there are 
twenty-eight varieties. The orchard 
is remarkable, thrifty, and the oldest 
trees are about twenty years old. The 
soil is dry, rolling gravel, with some 
limestone; the trees are planted twent} r 
feet apart, and do not seem by any 
means to be crowded. The ground is- 
plowed several times in the year and 
kept fallow, excepting when thought 
advisable, it is seeded to clover. The 
orchard is intersected by roads over six 
miles in length for the passage of wa¬ 
gons, and bounded by a continuous 
row of apple trees set ten feet apart for 
four and a half miles. The apple crop 
of the past year was 30,000 barrels. 


THE SAND BLAST. 

Among the wonderful and useful in¬ 
ventions of the times is the common 
sand blast. Suppose you desire a piece 
of marble for a grave-stone; you cover 
the stone with a sheet of wax no thicker 
than a wafer, then cut in the wax the 
name, date, etc., leaving the marble 
exposed. Now pass it under the blast 
and the wax will not be injured at ail, 
but the sand will cut letters deep into 
the stone. 

Or, if you desire raised letters, a 
flower or other emblem, cut the letters, 
flowers, etc., in wax and stick them 
upon the stone, then pass the stone 
under the blast and the sand will cut 











TIIE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


625 


it away. Remove tlie wax and you 
will have raised letters. 

Take a piece of French plate glass, 
say two feet by six, and cover it with 
fine lace; pass it under the blast, and 
not a thread of the lace will be injured, 
but the sand will cut deep into the 
glass wherever it is not covered by the 
lace. Now remove the lace and you 
have every delicate and beautiful figure 
raised upon the glass. 

In this way beautiful figures of all 
kinds are cut at a small expense. The 
workmen can hold their hands under 
the stone, but they must look out for 
finger nails, for they will be whittled 
off right hastily. 

If they put on steel thimbles to pro¬ 
tect the nails, it will do little good, for 
the sand will soon cutthem away; 
but if they wrap a piece of cotton cloth 
around them they are safe. You will 
at once see the philosophy of it. The 
sand whittles away and destroys any 
hard substance, even glass, but does 
not affect substances that are soft and 
yielding like wax, cotton or fine lace, 
or even the human hand. 


ETHER. 

Ether is properly the name of a class 
of substances rather than that of an 
individual article. We have sulphuric 
ether, acetic ether, benzoic ether, and 
many others, whose names depend on 
their composition or peculiar manner 
of production. The term itself is a 
Greek word, which means the “upper 
air, 11 in which sense we also use it. But 
it is also applied to these substances on 
account of their extreme lightness, and 
consequent liability to rise in vapor. 
Most of them are inflammable, possess 
a sweetish taste, and have many othei 
properties which are very sinilar in all. 
They are made by distilling alcohol 


with the different acids; sulphuric, ni¬ 
tric, acetic, benzoic, and others, as the 
case may be. Yet the product of this 
distillation with sulphuric acid—or 
sulphuric ether—is so much more com¬ 
mon than any of the others, and is ap¬ 
plied to so many more purposes, that 
by universal consent it has become 
known by the simple name of ether. 
This is the variet} r always meant when 
no other is specified. It has long been 
known, though only within a very few 
years has it been put to some of its 
most important uses. 

Analysis shows the elements of sul¬ 
phuric ether to be very similar to those 
of alcohol. It contains no sulphuric 
acid, though this entered so largely into 
the mixture from which it was distilled. 
The composition of the ether is four 
parts of carbon, five of hydrogen, and 
i one of oxygen. The composition of 
I alcohol is four parts of carbon, six of 
hydrogen, and two of oxygen. In 
reality, therefore, only a single atom 
each of oxygen and hydrogen (the two 
constituents of water) are taken away 
from alcohol to make it ether. 

Ether is one of the important articles 
in every chemical laboratory. It has 
also many uses in the arts. Evapora¬ 
ting so rapidly it readily produces cold, 
and this becomes intense if the evapor¬ 
ation is long continued. Yet the ether 
does not freeze, even at so low a tem¬ 
perature as a hundred and sixty below 
zero. The chief use of ether, however, 
is in medicine and surgery where it is 
much relied on for several important pur¬ 
poses. It is both a narcotic and a stimu¬ 
lant, according as it is differently used. 
In surgery it has within a few years, as 
is well known, been very generally 
employed to produce insensibility, so 
that difficult operations can be per¬ 
formed without pain to the patient. 

There has been much controversy as 












626 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


to whom belongs the honor of first 
suggesting the use of this agent in 
surgical practice. By proper manage¬ 
ment a continuous insensibility to pain 
may be kept up, by causing the patient 
to inhale the vapor; hence its use in 
surgical parctice. It was first publicly 
employed in the Massachusetts General 
Hospital in Boston, October 16, 1845, 
at the request of Dr. W. T. G. Morton, 
of that city, who had previously em¬ 
ployed it in his dental practice. Such 
was the success of this experiment that 
Dr. Morton within less than a month 
proceeded to secure a patent for its use 
in the United States, designating it by 
the name of “Letlieon.” But soon after 
Dr. Charles T. Jackson put in the claim 
of having suggested its use to Dr. 
Morton, upon which a long dispute 
ensued, public opinon being much di¬ 
vided as to the merits of the case which 
each claimant presented. The Academy 
of Sciences in Paris divided its honor 
between the two by awarding a prize 
of twenty-five hundred francs to Dr. 
Jackson for his “observations and ex- 
peri ments,” and an equal amount to 
Dr. Morton for “introducing the ether 
into practice after the indications of 
Dr. Jackson.” A bill, it may be re¬ 
membered, was, at one time, introduced 
into the Senate of the United States to 
purchase the patent of Dr. Morton for 
a hundred thousand dollars. This, 
however, was opposed, not only on the 
ground of the claim of Dr. Jackson, 
but also that of the widow of Dr. 
Horace Wells, of Hartford, Conn,, who 
asserted a previous discovery of the 
same thing in behalf of her husband. 
None of the claimants gained this 
prize, though all agree that no money 
could compensate for the suffering 
which this discovery, by whomsoever 
made, has saved. 


MONEY. 


The word “money” is from moneta , 
because in Home coin was first regu¬ 
larly struck in the temple of June Mo¬ 
neta, which again was derived from 
monere , to warm, because it was built 
on the spot where Manlius heard the 
Gauls approaching to the attack of the 
city. “Coin” is probably from the La¬ 
tin cuneus , a die or stamp. Many coins 
are merely so called from their weight, 
as for instance one pound, the French 
livre, Italian lira; other from the met¬ 
al, as the “aureus”; the “rupee” from 
the Sanskrit “runva,” silver; others 
from the design, as the angel, the tes- 
toon, from teste or tete , a head; others 
from the head of the state, as the sov¬ 
ereign, crown; others from the proper 
name of the monarch, such as the da- 
ric, from Darius, the Philip, Louis d’or, 
or the Napoleon. The dollar or thaler 
is short for the Joachimstaler, or money 
of tiie Joachims Valley, in Bohemia, 
where these cofiis were first struck in 
the sixteenth century. Guineas were 
called after the country from which 
the gold was obtained, and the “franc” 
is an abbreviation of the inscription 
Francorum Rex. The “sou” is from 
the Latin solidus. The word shilling 
appears to be derived from a root sio-ni- 
fying to divide; and in several cases the 
name indicates the fraction of some 
larger coin, as the denarius, half-penny, 
farthing, cent, and mill. The pound 
was originally not a coin, but a weight, 
and comes from the Latin pondus. Our 
pound was originally a pound of silver, 
which was divided into two hundred 
and twenty pennies. The origin of the 
word penny is unknown. Some have 
derived it from pende, to weigh; but 
this does not seem very satisfactory. 
Our word “sterling” is said to go back 
to the time of the Conquest, but the 









627 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


derivation has been much disputed. 
Some have supposed that it was first 
attributed to coins struck at Stirling, 

o 7 

but for this there is not the slightest 
evidence; others, that the name was de¬ 
rived from coins having a star on the 
obverse, but no coins which could have 
given rise to such a name are known. 
The most probable suggestion is that 
it has reference to the Easterling, or 
North German merchants. 


ACKNOWLEDGE THE CORN. 

The phrase “Acknowledge the corn,” 
is variously accounted for, but the fol¬ 
lowing is a true history of its origin: 
—In 1828, Andrew Stuart, a member 
of Congress, said in a speech, that Ohio 
Kentucky and Indiana sent their 
hay stacks, corn fields and fodder to 
New York and Philalelpliia for sale. 
Wickliffe, of Kentucky, called him to 
order, declaring those States did not 
send hay stacks or corn fields to New 
York for sale. “Well, what do you 
send?” asked Stewart. “Why, horses, 
mules, cattle and hogs.” “Well, what 
makes your horses, mules, cattle and 
hogs?” You feed $100 worth of hay 
to a horse. You just animate and get 
upon the top of your haystack and ride 
off to market. How is it with your 
cattle? You make one of them carry 
$50 worth of hay and grass to the 
Eastern market. How much corn does 
it take at thirty-three cents a bushel to 
fatten a hog?” “Why, thirty bushels.” 
“Then you put that thirty bushels into 
the shape of a hog, and make it walk 
off to the Eastern market.” Then Mr. 
Wickliffe jumped up and said—“Mr. 
Speaker, I acknowledge the corn.” 


Printing invented at Mentz by 
Gutenberg in 1450. 


STARCH. 


Starch and cotton goods originated in 
the East. The institutes of Menn, 800 
B. C., refer to the stiffening action of 
starch. Plinny informs us that starch 
was prepared from wheat by the in¬ 
habitants of Ohio. The method of 
starching linen was publicly taught in 
England in the year 1560 by a Dutch 
woman, a Mrs. Dingham, the wife of 
Queen Elizabeth’s coachman. 

Starch is found in the cells of all 
plants except fungi, in the form of 
minute granules. In England wheat is 
generally used for making starch. In 
this country com and potatoes are very 
generally used, the potatoes are prepared 
by thoroughly washing and then crush¬ 
ing in clear cold water; the resulting 
starchy matter flows in the vats beneath, 
where it is allowed to settle, and is after¬ 
wards washed one or more times, dried 
in stoves and packed; the refuse of the 
potatoes, the pumace and skins, being 
carried off by a current of water. The 
application of maize to the purpose was 
patented by James Coleman in 1841, 
and was successfully practiced in the 
ensuing year at Oswego, N. Y., by 
Thomas Kingsford. The Kingsfords 
at present have probably the largest 
starch factory in the world having bins 
five stories in,depth, capable of holding 
2,000,000 bushels of corn and turning 
out annually some 5,000 tons of starch. 
From the bins the grain is passed 
through fanning-mills, which removes 
impurities, and is then conducted to 
large vats, where it is macerated and 
softened to facilitate the seperation of 
the albumen and gluten. 

After this process it is ground and 
pulped by a series of burr stones and 









628 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


iron rollers, and is next transferee! to 
drums or sieves, where the starch is 
washed and by the action of water, the 
non-farinaceous portion remaining 
within the sieves to escape through 
openings at their ends and conducted 
away to receptacles, whence it is taken 
and used as food for cattle. The starch 
is received in vats where it is agitated 
by means ot stirrers operated by water 
or steam power, and is supplied with 
water and chemicals to purefy it. Where 
the superfluous water has been partially 
withdrawn and it is in a semi-fluid state, 
it is run into moulds, where it settles 
into solid cakes, which are broken into 
square cakes, these are placed in a kiln 
and dried at a low heat, and the cakes 
are scraped to remove impurities which 
appear as a yellow crust on the surface. 
They are now again dried, causing them 
to fall into little pieces, which assume 
the peculiar forms so well known. 
The highest grades, as corn-starch for 
puddings, or maizina , being ground 
fine, measured, and automatically put 
up and pressed in the packages by an 
arrangement of devices which prevent 
aud obviate the production of dust. 
There are various forms used, but the 
general principles of all beiug similar. 

SALT. 


Salt is a substance used for seasoning, 
being the chloride of sodium, and gen¬ 
erally known as common salt. It is 
obtained by evaporation from the waters 
of the sea, or saline lakes or springs, and 
from the earth in a chrystalized state, 
or in the form of rock salt. 

Mankind in all ages appear to have 
had a relish for salt. u Can that which 
is unsavory be eaten without salt ? or 
is there any taste in the white of an 
egg?” Job, VI,6. Salt among the an¬ 


cients was the emblem of friendship and 
fidelity, also of the inviobility of com¬ 
pacts, hence it was used in all their sacri¬ 
fices and covenants. The Bedouin 
Arabs consider it in the same light; 
they have great respect for bread and salt, 
and are accustomed to affirm or deny 
anything by these substances. Hostile 
as they generally are toward strangers, 
yet if they have eaten salt with anyone, 
it would be accounted the greatest of 
all crimes to rob him. The Romans 
received their pay in solarium or salt- 
money. The Mexican rulers interdicted 
the use of salt in their rebellious prov¬ 
inces. The early Greek theology dis¬ 
pensed with the use of salt in all their 
sacrificial ceremonies, but the Jewish 
dispensation enforced its use theirin. 
Some people such as those of Eperios 
never knew the use of salt The aborignal 
Bathoist tribe in the Australia cannot 
be tempted by love or money even to 
taste it. Nearly seventeen centuries 
ago spilling salt was regarded as un¬ 
lucky, but it does not appear to have 
ever been accounted for or reasonably 
guessed at. It is said that the first salt 
produced in this country by solar evap¬ 
oration was made by Thomas Howes, 
John Sears, and others at Dennis, Mass, 
in the year 1776. The largest and most 
extensive salt works in this eountry are 
at Syracuse, New York and Saginaw, 

Mich. _ 

THE NAMES OF THE MONTHS. 


January, so called from Janus, a 
heathen god, who presided over the 
gates of heaven. He has two faces, one 
looking to the old year, the other to¬ 
wards the new. He was the first king 
of Italy, and Romans used to give the 
doors in their houses the name of Ja- 
nua. February is derived from Februo, 









629 


TAE PEOPDES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


to purify, because the feasts of purifica¬ 
tion were celebrated at this season. The 
Romans offered sacrifices to their god¬ 
dess Februo for the spirits of departed 
friends. March was orginally the first 
month in the Roman year, and was ded¬ 
icated to Mars, the god of war. April 
is so called from aperio, which signifies 
to open, because nature now begins to 
expand its beauties. May was so named 
by Romulus, the founder of Rome, in 
honor of Maia, the Mother of Mercury. 
June, named by the Romans in honor 
of Mercury, who was represented as a 
juvenile figure, to which they applied 
the word Junins. July was called by 
the Romans Quintills, being the fifth 
month of their year, bnt was changed 
to Julius, in honor of Julius Caesar. 
August was called by the Romans Sex- 
tis, or sixth month from March; but in 
honor of Augustus Caesar, second em¬ 
peror, was changed to August. Sep¬ 
tember was derived from Septem, the 
seventh month of the Roman year, and 
imber, which means a shower. October 
was the eighth month of the Roman 
year. November is derived from no- 
vem and imber, or the ninth month of 
the Roman year. And December from 
decern, the tenth month of the Roman 

year. _ 

ACCIDENTAL DISCOVERIES. 

Valuable discoveries have been made, 
and many inventions suggested, by the 
veriest accidents. 

An alchemist, while seeking to dis¬ 
cover a mixture of earths that would 
make the most durable crucibles, one 
day found that he had made porcelain. 

The power of lenses, as applied to 
the telescope, was discovered by a 
watchmaker’s apprentice. While hol¬ 
ding spectacle-glasses between his 
thumb and finger, he was startled at 


the suddenly-enlarged appearance of a 
neighboring church-spire. 

The art of etching upon glass was 
discovered by a Nuremberg glass-cutter. 
By accident, a few drops of aqua fortis 
fell upon his spectacles. He noticed 
that the glass became corroded and 
softened where the acid had touched it. 
That was hint enough. He drew figures 
upon the glass with varnish, applied 
the corroding fluid, then cut away the 
glass around the drawing. When the 
varnish was removed, the figures ap¬ 
peared raised upon a dark ground. 

Mezzotinto owed its invention to the 

simple accident of the gun-barrel of a 
sentry becoming rusted with dew. 

The swaying to and fro of a chande¬ 
lier in a cathedral suggested to Galileo 
the application of the pendulum. 

The art of lithographing was per¬ 
fected through suggestions made by 
accident. A poor musican was curious 
to know whether music could not be 
etched upon stone as well as upon cop¬ 
per. 

After he had prepared his slab, his 
mother asked him to make a mem¬ 
orandum of such clothes as she pro¬ 
posed to send away to be washed. Not 
having pen, ink and paper convenient, 
he wrote the list on the stone with the 

etching preparation, intending to make 
a copy of it at leisure. 

A few days later, when about to clean 
athe stone, he wondered what effect aqu 
fortis would have upon it. He applied 
the acid, and in a few minutes saw the 
writing standing out in relief. The 
next step necessary was simply to ink 

the stone and take off an impression. 

The composition of which printing- 

rollers are made was discovered by a 
Solopian printer. Not being able to 
find the pelt-ball, he inked the type 
with a piece of soft glue which had 







630 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


fallen out of a glue-pot. It was such 
an excellent substitute that, after mix¬ 
ing molasses with the glue, to give the 
mass a proper consistency, the old pelt- 
hall was entirely discarded. 

The shop of a Dublin tobacconist, by 
the name of Lundyfoot, was destroyed 
by fire. While he was gazing dolefully 
into the smouldering ruins, he noticed 
that his poorer neighbors were gather¬ 
ing the snuff from the canisters. He test¬ 
ed the snuff for himself, and discovered 

that the fire had largely improved its 
pungency and aroma. 

It was a hint worth profiting by. He 
secured another shop, built a lot of 
ovens, subjected the snuff to a heating 
process, gave the brand a particular 
name, and in a few years became rich 
through an accident which he at first 
thought had completely ruined him. 

The process of whitening sugar was 
discovered in a curious way. A hen 
that had gone through a clay puddle 
went with her muddy feet into a sugar- 
house. It was noticed that wherever 
her tracks were the sugar was whitened. 
Experiments were instituted, and the 
result was that wet clay came to be 
used in refining sugar. 

The origin of bluetinted paper came 
about by a mere slip of the hand. 

The wife of William East, an Eng¬ 
lish paper-maker, accidently let a blue 
bag fall into one of the vats of pulp. 
The workmen were astonished when 
they saw the peculiar color of the pa¬ 
per, while Mr. East was highly incensed 
over what he considered a grave pecu¬ 
niary loss. His wife was so much 
frightened that she would not confess 
her agency in the matter. 

After storing the damaged paper for 

four years, Mr. East sent it to his agent 
at London, with instructions to sell it 
for what it would bring. The paper 


was accepted as a “purposed novelty,' 1 
and was disposed of at quite an advance 
over market price. 

Mr. East was astonished at receiving 
an order from his agent for another 
large invoice of the paper. He was 
without the secret, and found himself 
in a dilemma. Upon mentioning it to 
his wife, she told him about the acci¬ 
dent. He kept the secret, and the de¬ 
mand for the novel tint far exceeded 
his ability to supply it. 

A Brighton stationer took a fancy for 
dressing his show-window with piles of 
writing-paper, rising gradually from 
the largest to the smallest size in use; 
and, to finish his pyramids off nicely, 
he cut cards to bring them to a point. 

Taking these cards for diminutive 
note-paper, lady customers were conti- 
nally wanting some of “that lovely 
little paper”, and the stationer found it 
advantageous to cut paper to this size. 

As there was no space for adressing 
the notelets after they were folded, he, 
after much thought, invented the en¬ 
velope, which he cut by the aid of met¬ 
al plates made for the purpose. 

The sale increased so rapidly that he 
was unable to produce the envelopes 
fast enough, so he commissioned a doz¬ 
en houses to make them for him, and 
thus set going an important branch of 
the manufacturing stationary trade. 

GLUCOSE AND GRAPE SUGAR. 

The manufacture of syrup and sugar 
from corn starch is an industry which 
in this country, is scarcely a dozen 
years old, and yet it is one of no incon¬ 
siderable magnitude. Prof. Wiley in 
Popular Science Monthly says: On 
August 1, 1880, ten glucose factories 
were in operation in the United States, 

consuming daily about twenty thou¬ 
sand bushels of corn. 










THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


631 


, To avoid confusion of ideas, the fol¬ 
lowing statement seems necessary. The 
word Glucose, in this country, is em¬ 
ployed among dealers to designate ex¬ 
clusively the thick syrup which is made 
from corn starch. On the other hand, 
grape sugar is applied to the solid pro¬ 
duct obtained from the same source. 
The glucose and grape syrup of the 
trade have optical and chemical proper¬ 
ties quite different from many other 
substances bearing the same name. I 
shall use the words in the signification 
explained above. 

Glucose is a thick, tenacious syrupi 
almost colorless, or of a yellowish tint. 
It has an average specific gravity, at 
20° C., ofl'412. That which is made 
for Summer consumption is a little dens¬ 
er than that manufactured for Winter 
use. This syrup is so thick that, in the 
Winter, it is quite difficult to pour it 
from one vessel to another. 

The sweetness of glucose— i. e. the 
intensity of the impression it makes on 
the nerves of taste — varies greatly 
with different specimens. Some kinds 
approach in intensity the sweetness of 
cane sugar, while others seem to act 
slowly and feebly. It has been shown 
that the degree of sweetness depends 
on the extent of the chemical changes 
which go on in the conversion of starch 
into sugar. When the progress of 
conversion is stopped, as soon as the 
starch has disappeared, the resulting 
glucose has a maximum sweetness. The 
color of glucose depends on the thorough 
washing of the substance, during the 
process of manufacture, through ani¬ 
mal charcoal, and lowness of tempera¬ 
ture at which it is evaporated, and ra¬ 
pidity of evaporation. 

There is one variety of glucose which 
is made for confectioner’s use, which is 


much thicker and denser than that just 
described. Its specific gravity may 
reach 1'440, but it has no tendency to 
become hard and solid, like the so-called 
grape sugar. 

The grape sugar made from corn 
starch, when well made, is pure white 
in color when first made, but has a ten¬ 
dency to assume a yellowish tint when 
old. 

Glucose is used chiefly for the manu¬ 
facture of table syrups, candies, as food 
for bees, for brewing, and for artificial 
honey. 

All soft candies, waxes, and a large 
proportion of stick candies and cara¬ 
mels, are made of glucose. 

A very large percentage of a 1 ! the 
glucose made is used for the manufac¬ 
ture of table syrup. The process of 
manufacture is a very simple one: 

The glucose is mixed with some kind 
of cane syrup until the tint reaches a 
certain standard. The amount of cane 
sugar syrup required varies from three 
to ten per cent, according to circum¬ 
stances. These syrups are graded A, 
B, 0, etc., the tint growing deeper with 
each succeeding letter. 

I shall attempt here no detailed 
statement of the method of manufac¬ 
ture, but give only such an outline as 
may interest those, who like to know 
how the things on their table are pre¬ 
pared. The corn is first soaked for 
two or three days in warm water, and 
is then ground on specially prepared 
stones with a stream of water. The 
meal is next passed into a trough, the 
bottom of which is made of fine bolt¬ 
ing cloth. Here the starch is washed 
through, and le (i to large tanks, where 
it is allowed to settle. It is next beaten 
up with caustic soda to separate the 
gluten, and the starch is again allowed 





032 


THE PEOPDES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


to settle in long, shallow troughs. The 
starch, washed from all adhering alkali, 
the next beaten up with water into 
cream, and conducted into the convert¬ 
ing tubs. These tubs are supplied with 
coils of copper steam piping and are 
made of wood. Here the starch cream 
is treated with dilute sulphuric acid, 
and steam is allowed to bubble up 
through the mixture from small holes 
in the copper pipes. This process of 
conversion, which is called “ open con¬ 
version,” is completed in about two 
hours. 

Another method is called “close con¬ 
version.” The greater part of it how¬ 
ever is carried on by the method first 
named. 

After conversion the acid is neutra¬ 
lized by marble dust and animal char¬ 
coal. Since the sulphate of calcium, 
which is formed in this operation, is 
slightly soluble in water, carbonate of 
barium has been used instead of marble 
dust. Its use, however, has not become 
general. 

After neutralization the liquid is 
filtered through cloth and animal char¬ 
coal, and is then conveyed to the 
vacuum pan. Here it is evaporated, at 
as low a temperature as possible, to the 
required concentration. If grape sugar 
is to be made, the process of conver¬ 
sion is not stopped as soon as the starch 
has disappeared, but is carried on still 
further to a point which can only be 
determined bv trial. After concentra- 
tion it is conveyed into tanks, where 
the progress of solidification begins 
and continues for several days. 

Glucose, on the other hand, will not 
harden, whatever the degree of concen¬ 
tration may be, or, at least, if it do so, 
only partially and after many months. 

Glucose and grape sugar are mix¬ 


tures of several chemical substances. 
Starch, which is composed of six atoms 
of carbon, ten of hydrogen, and five of 
oxygen, when subjected to the action 
of dilute sulphuric acid, appears to un¬ 
dergo a molecular condensation and 
hydration. Among the substances 
formed may be reckoned dextrine, glu¬ 
cose, and a substance isomeric with 
cane sugar. 

The question of most practical im¬ 
portance is, “Is glucose a wholesome 
article of food?” I do not hesitate 
to answer this question in the affirma¬ 
tive. I mean by this, however, a glu¬ 
cose which is properly made. Such a 
glucose contains only a very little sul¬ 
phuric acid and lime, not much more 
than good Spring-water, and perhaps 
an almost infinitesimal trace of copper, 
so slight as only to be detected in a 
large quantity of the substance. 

There is no reason to believe that a 
glucose or grape sugar properly manu¬ 
factured, is any less wholesome than 
cane or maple sugar. 


DISTANCES AROUND THE WORLD. 


New York to San Francisco... . 3,450 
San Francisco to Yokahoma... . 4,764 


Yokahoma to Hong Kong.1,620 

Hong Kong to Singapore. 1,150 

Singapore to Calcutta.1,200 

Calcutta to Bombay., 1,409 

Bombay to Aden.1,664 

Aden to Suez.1,308 

Suez to Alexandria. 250 

Alexandria to Marseilles. 1,300 

Marseilles to Paris. 536 

Paris to London. 316 

London to Liverpool. 205 

Liverpool to New York. 3,000 

Total.22^72 






















THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


633 


CAPACITY OF CISTERNS OR WELLS. 


Tabular view of the number of gallons 
contained in the clear, between the brick 


Dia. 

2 feet equal 

Gal. 

19 

Dia. 

8 feet equal 

Gal. 

313 

Alabama. 

Alaska. 

Mobile. 

Sitka. 


u 

30 

84 

u 

353 

Arizona. 

Tuscon. 

3 

u 

44 

9 

u 

396 

Arkansa.s. 

Little Rock.... 


u 

60 

n 

u 

443 

California. 

San Francisco. 

4 

u 

78 

10 

u 

498 

Colorado. 

Denver. 


u 

99 

11 

u 

592 

Connecticut.. . 

Hartford. 

5 

u 

122 

12 

u 

705 

Dakota. 

Fort Randall.. 


.1 

148 

13 

u 

827 

Delaware. 

Wilmington... 

6 

u 

176 

14 

u 

958 

Dist. Columbia. 

Washington... 

6 | 

u 

207 

15 

u 

1,101 

Florida. 

Jacksonville... 

7 

u 

240 

20 

u 

1,958 

Georgia. 

Atlanta. 

71 

* a 

u 

275 

25 

u 

3,059 

Idaho . 

Fort Boise .... 


THE DIMENSIONS OF BOXES. 


A box 24 by 16 inches square and 28 
inches deep, will contain a barrel (five 
bushels). 

A box 24 by 16 inches square and 14 
inches deep, will contain half a barrel. 

A box 26 by 15f inches square and 8 
inches deep, will contain a bushel. 

A box 12 by 11 J inches square and 8 
inches deep, will contain half a bushel. 

A box 8 by 8 J inches square and 8 
inches deep, will contain one peck. 

A box 3 by 8 inches square and 4| 
inches deep, will contain one gallon. 

A box 4 by 8 inches square and 4| 
inches deep, will contain half a gallon. 

A box 4 by 4 inches square and 4J 
inches deep, will contain a quart. 

THE CLIMATES OF THE 
UNITED STATES. 


where observations have been most con¬ 
tinuously kept. 


State or Territory. 


A table prepared by selection from 
the voluminous records of the recent 
work on American temperature showing 
the mean annual temperature of the 
atmosphere at a given point in each of 
the forty-nine States and Territories of 
the Union. The place selected is either 
the capitol or some leading city or town 


Illinois. 

Indiana. 

Ind. Territory. 

Iowa. 

Kansas. 

Kentucky. 

Louisana. 

Maine. 

Maryland. 

Massachusetts . 

Michigan. 

Minnesota .... 
Mississippi.... 

Missouri. 

Montana. 

Nebraska. 

Nevada. 

N. Hampshire. 
New Jersey... 
New Mexico... 
New York.... 
North Carolina, 

Ohio. 

Oregon. 

Pennsylvania.. 
Rhode Island.. 
South Carolina. 

Tennessee. 

Texas . 

Utah. 

Vermont. 

Virginia. 

Wash. Ter.... 
West Virginia. 
Wisconsin 
Wyoming, 


Place of Observa¬ 
tion. 


Springfield.. . 
Indianapolis... 
Fort Gibson... 
Des Moines ... 
Leavenworth.. 

Louisville. 

New Orleans.. 

Augusta. 

Baltimore. 

Boston. 

Detroit. 

St. Paul. 

Jackson. 

St. Louis. 

Helena. 

Omaha. 

Winfield Scott. 

Concord . 

Trenton. 

Santa Fe. 

Albany. 

Raleigh....... 

Columbus. 

Portland. 

Harrisburg 

Providence. 

Columbia. 

Nashville 

Austin. 

Salt Lake City, 
Montpelier 

Richmond. 

Steiacoon. 

Romaney. 

Madison.... 
Fort Bridger .. 


Mean 

annual 

temper¬ 

ature. 


66 deg. 

46 deg. 
69 deg. 

63 deg. 
55 deg. 

48 deg. 
50 deg’ 

47 deg. 
43 deg. 

55 deg. 
69 deg. 
58 deg. 

52 deg. 

50 deg. 

51 deg. 
60 deg. 

49 deg. 
51 deg. 

56 deg. 
69 deg. 

45 deg. 

54 deg. 

48 deg. 

47 deg. 

42 deg. 

64 deg. 

55 deg. 

43 deg. 

49 deg. 

50 deg. 

46 deg. 

53 deg. 

51 deg. 

48 deg. 

50 deg. 
53 deg. 

53 deg. 

54 deg. 
48 deS. 
62 deg. 
58 deg. 

67 deg. 

52 deg. 
43 deg. 

57 deg. 

51 deg. 

52 deg. 
45 deg. 

4-1 riper 



















































































634 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


THE RELIGION OF OUR 
FOREFATHERS. 


The different religions or forms of 
worship in Boston from 1630 to 1842 
are taken from the records showing in 
regular order the year in which the 
denominations were first represented, 
where and by whom, and the number 
of ministers during that period. 

CONGREGATIONALISM 

John Wilson, graduated at Cam¬ 
bridge, Eng. and came to New England 
in 1630, settled First Church Nov. 22, 
1630. 

BAPTIST. 

Thomas Gould, Baptist, settled First 
Baptist Church 1665. 

EPISCOPAL. 

Robert Ratcliffe, Episcopal, graduated 
in Eng. settled Kings Chapel, June 15, 
1686. 

FIRST PROTESTANT. * 

Peter Daille settled School St. Church 
in 1687. 

PRESBYTERIAN. 

John Morehead graduated, Scotland, 
settled Federal St. Church March 31, 
1730. 

UNIYERSALIST. 

John Murray graduated in England, 
settled First Universalist Church Oct. 
24, 1773. 

UNITARIAN. 

James Freeman Unitarian, Graduated 
at Harvard College 1777, settled Kings 
Chapel Oct.lS, 1782. 

CATHOLIC. 

Claudius Florent Bouchard de La 
Poterie, Catholic, settled the Church 
of the Holy Cross, 1784. 

METHODIST. 

Jesse Lee, Methodist, settled First 
Methodist Church 1790. 


CHRISTIAN. 

Simon Clough, Christian, settled 
First Christian Church 1819. 

NEW JERUSALEM. 

Thomas Worcester, New Jerusalem, 
Graduated at Harvard College 1818, 
settled New Jerusalem Church Aug. 17, 
1828. 

EVANGELICAL PROTESTANT. 

Henry Emanuel Smith, Evangelical 
Protestant, settled the German E. P. 
Church May, 13, 1836. 

GERMAN LUTHERAN. 

George M. Merz, Lutheran, Gradu¬ 
ated in Germany, settled German E. L. 
Church Oct. 28, 1838. 

FREE WILL BAPTIST. 

Jonas Welch Holman, F.W. Baptist 
settled First F. W. Baptist Church 
July, 1839. 

During the time of over two hundred 
years there were settled in Boston 330, 
Ministers divided as follows: Congre¬ 
gational 120, Methodist 80, Episcopal 
41, Baptist 39, Catholic 22, Uni¬ 
versalist 6, Christian 3, First Protest¬ 
ant 2,Evangelical Protestant 2, Luther¬ 
an 2, New Jerusalem 1, Free Will 
Baptist 1. 


CRAPE. 


This is a thin fabric made of raw 
silk which has been tightly twisted, 
without removing the viscous matter 
with which it is covered when spun by 
the worm. It is simply woven as a 
thin gauze, then dressed with a thick 
solution of gum which in drying causes 
the threads partially to untwist, and 
thus gives a wrinkled and rough ap¬ 
pearance to the fabric. 









THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 635 


HARVARD COLLEGE, 
THE OLDEST IN AMERICA. 


The first mention made in any act 
done, or intention formed in reference 
to a College anywhere, is in those of the 
Colony Records, under date of Oct. 28, 
1636, viz; “The Court agreed to give 
£400 towords a School or College 
whereof £200 shall be paid next year, 
and £200 when the work is finished, 
and the next Court to appoint where 
and what building. The next year under 
the date of Nov. 15, 1637, the court 
passed the following order; “The College 
is ordered to be at Newtown 11 , the name 
of which was changed May 6, 1638, to 
Cambridge as it was thought to be a 
more appropriate name for the place of 
such an institution. On Nov 20,1637, 
twelve gentlemen (denominated a com¬ 
mittee) were appointed to take order 
for a College at Newtown. These 
gentlemen managed the institution till 
a new appointment was made in the 
charter of 1642. College Book, No. 3^ 
P. 2, says; Mr. Nathaniel Eaton was 
chosen Professor in 1637 and had the 
management of such edifices as were 
meet and necessary for the College and 
for his own lodgings. He was made a 
Freeman June 9, 1638. It was to this 
College under his administration than 
John Harvard bequeathed his library, 
and half his property (about £700,) in 
1638, On the 13th, of March 1639, the 
Court passed the order: It is ordered 
that the College agreed upon formerly 
to be built at Cambridge, shall be called 
Harvard College. The adoption of 
this name is an implied admission on 
the part of the Court, that Mr. Harvard 
had entitled himself to be considered 
the founder, by making the first donat¬ 
ion, though they had proposed, two 
years before to make a donation them¬ 


selves towards the building, but it does 
not appear that it was ever done. Rev. 
John Harvard came over here in 1637, 
and was admitted a Freeman by taking 
the oath of allegience to the government 
under the first charter of the Mass¬ 
achusetts colony Nov. 2, 1637. He died 
at Charleston Mass. Sept. 14, 1638 of 
a disease contracted before he left 
England. The following inscription 
copied from the burying-Ground in 
Charleston May 18, 1849, from a plain 
granite shaft about twelve feet in height 
standing upon the most elevated part 
of the ground. 

HARVARD. 

On the twenty sixth day of September 
A. D. 1728, this stone was erected by 
the graduates of the University at Cam¬ 
bridge, in honor of the founder; who 
died at Charlestown on the twenty-sixth 
day of September, A. D. 1638. 

There appears to be a discrepancy as 
to the exact date, both authorities claim¬ 
ing to be correct. 

The records show that Mr. Eaton, 
Professor, as the head of the institution 
received, disbursed, and accounted for 
the principal part of Mr. Harvard’s 
legacy to the College, in the erection of 
its first buildings. He left the College 
in the fall of 1639. 

The first person appointed under the 
title of President, was Rev. Henry Dun- 
ster M. A. who came to New England 
in 1649, and commenced his duties Aug. 
27th. of that year. The first commence¬ 
ment was two years afterwards, Mr. 
Dunster was succeeded by Rev. Charles 
Chauncey, D. D. Nov. 27th. 1654, The 
succession of Presidents as follows: Rev. 
Leonard Hoar M. D. Sept. 10,1672; Rev. 
Uriah Oaks M. A. April 7, 1675; Rev. 
John Rogers M. A. April 10,1682; Rev. 
Increase Mather D. D. June 11, 1685; 
Rev. Samuel Willard M. A. Vice Presi- 








636 


THE PEOPLE’S LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


dent, Sept. 6,1701; Hon. Jolin Leverett 
M. A. January 14,1707; Rev. Benjamin 
Wadsworth, M. A. July 7, 1725; Rev. 
Edward Holyoke M. A. Sept. 28, 1737; 
Rev. Samuel Lock D.D. March 21,1770; 
Rev. Samuel Lagdon D. D. Oct. 14,1774; 
Rev. Joseph Willard D. D. L. L. D. Dec. 
19. 1781; Rev. Samuel Webber D. D. 
March 6, 1806; Rev. John Thornton 
Kirkland D. D. L. L. D. Nov. 14, 1810, 
Hon. Joseph Quincy L. L. D. Jan. 15. 
1829; Hon. Edward Everett L. L. D. 
Jan. 3, 1846; Rev. Jared Sparks L. L 
D. Feb. 1, 1849; Rev. James Walker D. 
D. Feb. 10, 1853; Cornelius C. Felton, 
Feb. 16, I860; Rev. Thomas Hill Oct. 
6 ; 1862; Charles W. Elliot May 19, 
1869; Dr. A. P. Peabody was acting 
President in 1868-69, during the inter¬ 
regnum between President Hill’s resig¬ 
nation and President Elliot’s election. 


INDIGO. 

Indigo has been used in India from a 
very early period, and was imported 
thence by the ancient Greeks and 
Romans, but was lost to Europe during 
great part of the middle ages. The culti¬ 
vation of the plant and preparation of 
the dye were described by Marcho Polo 
in the thirteenth century. It was re¬ 
introduced by the Dutch about the 
middle of the sixteenth century. Its 
use in England, France and Saxony 
was then for a considerable time pre¬ 
vented by a strong prejudice against 
it, arising from the difficulty in fixing 
the color. Since this has been over¬ 
come, the cultivation of plants produc¬ 
ing indigo, long confined to India, has 
extended to many other tropical coun¬ 
tries. These plants generally belong 
to the genus Indigofera. The species 
of this genus number at least 150 and 
are natives of almost all tropical coun¬ 
tries. 


It is a half-shrubby plant, two to 
three feet high, with pinnate Caves, 
which have five or six pairs of long- 
obovate, dull, bluish-green leaflets and 
racemes of axillary pale red flowers. 

In the process of preparation, the 
plant is macerated in water, fermenta¬ 
tion takes place, the liquor becomes of 
a greenish color, and in due time is 
decanted, the coloring principle dissol¬ 
ved by the water absorbes oxygen 
from the air, and assumes a blue color, 
becoming at the same time insoluble, 
a gradual precipitation takes place fav¬ 
ored by the addition of lime-water. The 
precipitated matter is then washed 
upon linen filters, then dried and shaped 
usually into cubical masses, for market. 


Comparative Value of Coins. 


In pursuance to the provisions of the Revised 
Statutes, H. C. Burchard, director of the mint, has 
estimated the values of standard coins in circulation, 
of the various nations of the world, which he has trans¬ 
mitted to the Secretary of the Treasury in the following 
form: 


Country. 


Monetary unit. 


H B 
— O 

gS 

garj 


Argentine Repub.. 

Peso*. 

Austria.. 

Florint. 

Belgium. 

Franc* .... 

Bolivia. 

Boliviano!. 

Brazil... 

Milreis of l,000reis 

British Poss. N. A. 

Dollar!!. 

Chili. 

Peso*. 

Cuba.. 

Peso*.. 

Denmark. 

Crown!!. 

Ecuador... 

Peso! . 

Egypt.. 

Piaster!! . 

France. 

Franc* . 

Great Britain. 

Pound Sterling!!.. 

Greece _ 

Drachma*_ 

German Empire.... 

Mark!!. 

Hayti. 

Gourds*. 

India__ 

Rupeeof16 annas! - 

Italy. 

Lira*. 

Japan . 

Yena*_ 

Liberia. 

Dollar!!.. 

Mexico. 

Dollar!_ 

Netherlands.. 

Florin*.. 

Norway. 

Crown!!. 

Peru . 

Sol!. 

Portugal. 

Milreis of 1,000 reis!! .. 

Russia. 

Ruble of 100 copecks!.. 

Spain. 

Peseta of 100 centimes* 

Sweden. 

Crown!!_ 

Switzerland. 

Franc*. 

Tripoli. 

Malibub of 20 piasters!. 

Turkey. 

Piaster!! 

IT. S. of Columbia.. 

Peso!. 

Venezuela. 

Bolivar*.... 




$0.96.5 

.40.1 

.19.3 

.81.2 

.54.6 

1.00 

.91.2 

.93.2 

.26.8 

.81.2 

.04.9 

.19.3 

4.86.6*4 

.19.3 

.23.8 

.96.5 

.£8.6 

.19.3 

.87.6 

1.00 

.88.2 

.40.2 

.26.8 

.81.2 

1.08 

.65 

.19.3 

.26.8 

.19.3 

.73.3 

.04.4 

.81.2 

.19.3 


*Gold and silver. t fSilver. t+Gold. 







































































THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


637 


n——H - ---—-— -__ 

THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE. 


For almost a century the enemies of 

«/ 

the Church have been endeavoring to 
make her pass as the opponent of sci¬ 
ences and letters, as the enemy of all 
modern progress. 

Here are statistics which prove that 
our principal scientific discoveries are 
due to priests and monks. 

Judge of it. 

We are indebted to St. Anatolius, 
Bishop of Laodicea, for the astronom¬ 
ical Canon of Easter. 

To Dionysius the Little, a Scythian 
monk, for the cycle which bears his 
name, and which has fixed the begin¬ 
ning of the Christian era. 

To Boetius, a priest, for pipe-organs, 
Artesian wells, hydraulic cements, and 
the first terrestrial sphere. 

To Alcuin, a monk, for the astro¬ 
nomical classing of the planets. 

To the Venerable Bede, for dactyl- 
onomy and the present form of the cal¬ 
endar. 

To Guido, monk of Arezzo, for the 
musical bearing of the gamut. 

To Roger Bacon for the telescope, 
the corrections of the Julian calendar, 
which Father Clavius, a Jesuit, com¬ 
pleted later on. 

To the priest Virgil [O’Fheargail 
(O’Farrell), Bishop of Salzburg], for 
the first assertion of the roundness of 
the earth and the existence of the anti¬ 
podes. 

To Vincent, of Beavais, a canon, for 
central attraction as the reason of the 
equilibrium of the earth in the midst 
of the atmosphere. 

To Albertus Magnus for zinc and 

arsenic. 

To Richard Warlingfort, abbot of 
St. Alban, for the first astronomical 

clock. 

To the monk Gerbert, afterward 


Pope under the name of Sylvester II., 
for watches with wheels, the Madge- 
burg dial, the steam engine, and the 
importation of the decimal system 
which St. John Damascene had taught 
at Damascus, when he was professor to 
the great vizier, the terrible Abel 
Maleck. 

To the Deacon Giosa for the magnet 
and compass. 

To Spina, of the Order of St. Domi¬ 
nic, for spectacles. 

To Basil Valentine, a monk of the 
same order (?), the first application of 
chemistry to medicine. [“ Later on, 
Basil Valentine, a German Benedictine, 
distinguished himself by his many dis¬ 
coveries, and by his introduction of 
qualitative analysis into the study of 
chemistry.”— Rev. John A. Zham, C ., 
S. C.] 

To Cardinals Cusa and Schombert, 
and to Forcarini, of the Order of Car¬ 
melites, for the assertion, before Gali¬ 
leo, that the earth revolves around the 
sun, which is motionless in respect to it. 

To Father Guesmaz, a Portuguese 
Jesuit, for the construction of the first 
air-ship. 

To Father Kircher, a Jesuit, for the 
magic lantern and the burning glass. 

To the Cure Compagni for the art of 
cutting precious stones. 

To the Abbe Chappe for the aerial 
telegraph. 

To the Deacon Holler, of Pimpre, 
for having, two years before Franklin, 
explained storms by the presence of 
electricity in the clouds. 

To the Abbe Lacaille for the spirit- 
level. 

To Father Boscowil for the measure¬ 
ment of the equator of planets. 

To the Abbe Girard Soulavie for the 
chronology of fossils. 

To Mgr. Rendu for the motion of 
glaciers. 







THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION 


V 


38 


WILLS: Testators and Executors. 


Directions for making a Will.— Every man having 
a wife or family should make his will. However 
small his estate, however remote may seem the 
probability of death, however confident that his 
property will pass to those he most wishes to bene¬ 
fit, it is an imperative duty in most cases, and is 
safer in every case, to protect the interests of the 
survivors by means of a will. When persons die 
intestate, having foolishly put off making a will 
until it is too late, their negligence may deprive 
those for whom they were most anxious, of the 
very benefits which had demanded a life-long 
struggle to provide. Thus a widow may find to her 
grievous disappointment that the estate, a life 
policy perhaps, or a small legacy* is not all hers, 
but has to be shared with distant relatives of her 
husband’s, whose names perhaps she has never 
before heard. Or it may bo a daughter who i3 left, 
and whose spendthrift husband (where the com¬ 
mon law rule prevail as to the wife’s personal 
property) becomes the legal possessor of the little 
fund intended for his wife’s support. Instances 
might be multiplied in which negligence, or unrea¬ 
soning dislike to making a will, become irreparable 
crimes against those who have the first claim to 
protection. If the estate consists of real as well as 
personal property, i. e., of lands and houses as well 
as money and goods; or if the will is to contain 
many provisions, a lawyer should always be em¬ 
ployed. Assuming that a lawyer is not employed, 
a person having resolved to make a will must not 
regard it as a light matter, to be got rid of in a few 
minutes like writing a letter, but one demanding 
the most serious attention. It is only after a per - 
son is dead, and can not explain his meaning, that 
his will can be opened to dispute. It is the more 
necessary, therefore, to express what is meant in 
language of the utmost clearness, avoiding the use 
of any word or expression that seems to admit of 
another meaning than the one intended. It is bet¬ 
ter to be prolix than to leave the smallest room for 
doubt or uncertainty, although the same name be 
repeated over and over again. Sounding phrases 
and carefully rounded periods are entirely out of 
place. Avoid the use of what may be thought 
“legal terms,” when the same thing may be ex¬ 
pressed in plain language. If in writing the will a 
mistake be made, it is better to re-write the whole. 
Before a Avill is executed, that is, signed by the tes¬ 
tator in the presence of two or more witnesses, an 
alteration may be made by striking through the 
words with a pen, but opposite to such alterations 
the testator and witnesses should write their names 
or piace their initials. Never scratch out a word 
with a knife or other instrument, and no altera¬ 
tion of any kind whatever should be made after the 
will is executed. If the testator afterwards wishes 
to change the disposition of his estate, it is better 
to make a new will revoking the old one, or to add 
a codicil to the first, which must be duly executed 


and attested in the same manner as the original 
will. Although, of course, forms of wills must 
vary to suit different cases, the following direc¬ 
tions may be found useful to those who, in cases of 
emergency, are called upon to draw up wills, 
either for themselves or others : 

Testator or Testatrix.— The person who makes the 
will is the testator, or if the will-maker be a woman 
the testatrix. 

Estate. —By this word is to be understood prop¬ 
erty of all kinds, both real and personal. Heal 
property includes such things as freehold lands 
and houses while personal property consists of 
money, house, furniture, goods, assurance poli¬ 
cies, stock in private corporations, and the like. 

Residuary Legatees.— It is well in all cases to leave 
to some person or persons “the residue of my 
estate and effects,” although it may be thought 
that the whole of the property has been disposed 
of in legacies already mentioned in the will. It 
should be remembered that a will operates on all 
property acquired after it has been made. 

To Begin a Will.—A form in which a will may be 
commenced is: “In the name of God, Amen. 

This is the last will of me, Thomas Smith, of-, 

in the county of-, State of-.” 

To End a Will.— After disposing of the property 
the will may be ended as follows: “And I revoke 

all former wills and codicils. Dated this-day 

of-, one thousand eight hundred and-.” 

Execution of a Will.— The testator should sign his 
name at the foot or end of the will, in presence of 
two or more witnesses, who will afterwards sign 
their names in his presence, at his request, and, if 
possible, in the presence of each other; the testator 
declaring the will to be his last will and testament. 
A person who has been left a legacy in the will, or 
whose wife or husband has been left a legacy, 
should not be an attesting witness, husband and 
wife may both be witnesses, provided neither is a 
legatee. 

Attesting Execution.— Opposite to or beneath the 
testator’s signature should be written the attesta¬ 
tion clause. The form of attestation should fol¬ 
low the requirements of the statutes operative 
where the will is executed. It is desirable that the 
addresses of the witnesses should be given, as they 
may possibly be wanted at some future time. If the 
testator should be too ill to sign, even by a mark 
another person may sign the testator’s name to 
the will for him, in his presence and by his direc¬ 
tions, and in this case it should be shown that the 
testator knew the contents of the document. Un¬ 
less otherwise provided by statutes, the attesta¬ 
tion clause, in such case, should be worded: 
“ Signed by Thomas Brown, by the direction and 
in the presence of the testator, Thomas Smith, in 
the joint presence of us, who thereupon signed 
our names in his presence and in the presence of 
each other, the will having been first read over to 












THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OP INFORMATION. 


639 


the testator., who appeared fu'ly to understand 
ttie same.” The person signing- the testator’s 
name should Lot be one of the witnesses. If by- 
inadvertence the testator should have signed his 
will without the witnesses being- present, then the 
attestation should be: “The testator acknowledged 
his signature already made as signature to his last 
will and testament in the joint presence,” etc. 

Codicil.— When some change is required to be 
made in the disposition of property as stated in the 
will, the change should be embodied in a codicil. 
A codicil should begin : “A codicil to my will, the 
said will bearing date,” signed and witnessed with 
the same formalities as the will. 

Executors.— Two or more executors may be 
appointed, although one is sufficient. The name 
and residem-e of each executor should be given in 

full as follows: “I appoint John Jones, of-, and 

Edward Mathews, of -, executors of this, my 

will.” An executor may be a legatee under the 
will. • Thus a child or wife to whom the whole or a 
portion of the estate is left may be appointed sole 
executor, or one of two or more executors. The 
residences of the witnesses need not be stated, if it 
is well known who are the persons intended. 

Appointment of Trustees.— The form of appoint¬ 
ment of executors will also serve w-hen the estate 
is left in care of trustees except that the person 
must be designated “ executors and trustees,” in 
case the same persons are to act in both capacities. 
When the estate is wholly for the children, the will 
may read after the appointment of the executors 
and trustees: “I give and devise all my estate and 
effects real and personal, of which I may die pos¬ 
sessed and entitled to, untothesaid John Jones and 
Edward Mathews, upon trust, for my children, in 
equal shares, such shares to be paid or transferred 
to them on attaining the age of twenty-one years.” 

Revocations.— A will is revoked by a subsequent 
will—by marriage, or by burning, tearing, or other¬ 
wise destroying them. 

Lapsed Legacies.— If a legatee dies in the lifetime 
of a testator the legacy lapses and falls into a 
residue, excepting only in cases where legatee is a 
child of the testator and leaves issue living at the 
tGst&tor's deftth* 

To one Person Absolutely.—'When it is the inten¬ 
tion to leave all the property to one person, as for 
instance, a wife or child, the will may read: “I 
devise and bequeath all my estate and effects, real 
and personal,* which 1 may die possessed of and 
entitled to, unto my wife, Mary Smith, absolutely.” 

To Children Under Ape.—When estates are left 
wholly or in part to children under the age of 
twenty-one years, it is desirable to appoint trustees 
to hold the property in trust for those to whom it 
will ultimately belong. A wife may be appointed 
a trustee, or may be sole trustee. 

Education and Maintenance of Children.— Execu¬ 
tors may be empowered to apply the whole or part 
of the income arising from each child’s share of 
the property to the child’s education and main- 


tGOfl-nCG 

To Wife for Life, and Then to Children.— In cases 
where the'wife is to have the income arising from 
the property, and the children are to share equally 
in the property after their mother’s death, it will 
be necessary to leave the estate in the hands of 
trustees. After appointing the trustees, the will 
may read: “ To pay the income arising from my 
said estate and effects unto my wife for life, and 
after her decease I give and bequeath all my estate 
and effects, to be divided equally among all my 
children, absolutely.” , . 

Daughter's Sole Benefit.— When the whole or a 
portion of an estate is intended for the absolute 
and sole use of a daughter, to the exclusion of ner 
husband’s control or claim, it should be specified 
that the property so left, or if the property is in 
the hand of trustees, the income arising from it, is 
for “her sole and separate use, notwithstanding 
coverture, free from the control, debts, andengage- 
ments of any husband.” This is not necessary in 
States whose statutes provide for 8 P C ^ separate 
use; but the provision, by will, is a wise one at any 

All Property to be Invested.— Executors and trus¬ 
tees may be empowered to sell and dispo^ ot an 
estate, and, after the payment of all J^st debts and 
expenses, to invest the remainder as may be spec - 
tied in the will. 


BUSINESS LAW. 


If a note is lost or stolen it does not 
release the maker, he must pay it if the 
consideration for which it was given 
and the amount can be proven. 

A note or contract made on Sunday 
is void or voidable. 

Notes bear interest only when so 
stated. 

A note by a minor or a contract made 
with a minor is void or voidable. 

A note obtained by fraud or from a 
person in state of intoxication cannot 
be collected. 

The time of payment of a negotiable 
note must not depend upon a contin¬ 
gency. The promise must be absolute. 

The loss of a bill or note is not suffi¬ 
cient excuse for not giving notice of 
protest. 

The payee should be distinctly 
named in the note unless payable to 
bearer. 

If the time of payment is not inserted 
it is held payable on demand. 

A bill may be written upon any pa¬ 
per or substitute for it, either with ink 
or pencil. 

It is a fraud to conceal a fraud. 

Signatures made with a lead pencil 
are good in law. 

A receipt for money is not always 
conclusive. 

The acts of one partner bind all the 
rest. 

No consideration is sufficient in law 
if it be illegal in its nature. 

Checks or drafts must be presented 
for payment without unreasonable 
delay. 

Checks or drafts should be presented 
during business hours, but in this 
country, except in the case of banks, 
the time extends through the day and 
evening. 

If the drawee of a draft has changed 










640 


THE PEOPLES’ LIBRARY OF INFORMATION. 


"his residence the holder must use due 
or reasonable diligence to find him. 

If one who holds a check as payee or 
otherwise transfers it to another, he 
has a right to insist that the check be 
presented that day, or at the farthest 
on the day following. 

Principals are responsible for the acts 
of their agents. 

An agreement without consideration 
is void. 

Each individual in a partnership is 
responsible for the whole amount of 
the debts of the firm except in cases of 
special partnership. 

An indorsee has a right of action 
against all whose names were on the 
bill when he received it. 

An indorsement may be written on 
the face or back. 

An indorser may prevent his own 
liability to be used by writing, without 
recourse or words to that effect. 

Ignorance of the law excuses no one. 

A contract with a lunatic is void. 

“Value received” is usually within 
a note and should be, but is not neces¬ 
sary. If not written it is presumed by 
law or may be supplied by proof. 

A note indorsed in blank (the name 
of the indorsee only written) is trans¬ 
ferable by delivery the same as if made 
payable to bearer. 

If the letter containing a protest of 
non-payment be put into the postoffice, 
any miscarriage does not affect the 
party giving notice. 

Notice of protest may be sent either 
to the place of business or of residence 
of the party notified. 

A loss of a bill or note is not suffi¬ 
cient excuse for not giving notice of 
protest. 

If two or more partners are jointly 
liable on a note or bill, due notice to 
one of them is sufficient. 

All claims which do not rest upon a 


seal of judgment must be sued within six 
years from the time when they arise. 

If when a debt is due the debtor is 
out of the State the “six years” do not 
begin to run until he returns. If he 
afterward leave the State the time for¬ 
ward counts the same as if he remained 
in the State. 

Except in the case of absence from 
the State the “six years” begin when 
the bill or account is due. In case of 
note they count from the “three days 
of grace. r In case of a note on de¬ 
mand they count from the time of the 
demand. 

The Statute of Limitations does not 
avoid or cancel the debt, but only pro¬ 
vides that no action in law may be main¬ 
tained after a given time. The Statute 
does not affect the collateral security, 

Written instruments are to be con¬ 
strued and interpreted by the law ac¬ 
cording to the simple, customary and 
natural meaning of the w r ords used. 

The finder of negotiable paper, as of 
all other property, must make reason¬ 
able efforts to find the owner before he 
is entitled to appropriate it for his own 
purpose. If the finder concealed it he 
is liable to the charge of larceny or 
theft. 

Joint payees of a bill or note who 
are not partners must all join in an 
indorsement. 

After the death of a holder of a bill 
or note his executor or administrator 
may transfer it by his indorsement. 

The husband who acquires a right to 
a bill or note which was given to the 
wife either before or after marriage 
may indorse it. 

Acceptances applies to bills and not 
to notes. It is an engagement on the 
part of the person on whom the bill is 
drawn to pay it according to its tenor. 
The usual way is to write across the 
face of the bill the word “accepted.” 







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